Finding Fossils
by Thoughtful Constellations
Summary: Agent Grace Marks has a past that she doesn't talk about, even to Tony, the person she trusts more than anyone else in the world. When Tony finally takes their relationship to a serious new level, Grace must face the fact that the only way to move on to where she wants to be is to confront what she's been refusing to face. Tony/OC (Sequel to Acting on Instinct)
1. Iron Man

**Hello! To all my fellow readers who are continuing Grace and Tony's journey, welcome back! Sorry it took a while to get this posted. I think I wrote maybe 3 drafts of this first chapter until I got it where I wanted it. I'm especially picky about my opening chapters :P**

**To any new readers, welcome! If you want to hop on board the Agent Grace Marks and Tony train, please feel free to check out my other stories! If you would like to read them, they go in the following order: Survival Skills, Healing Touch, Acting on Instinct, and well, now this one.**

**Please let me know your thoughts on this first chapter! Thank y'all so much =)**

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Chapter 1

_Who is Grace Marks? For the past 2 years, Grace Marks has been in the public eye as the composed, levelheaded girlfriend of former playboy Tony Stark. She was first introduced as Greyson Marcussen, a world renowned aeronautical engineer who was assisting Tony Stark with the construction of his new suits. However, after a week of working in Stark's workshop, she retired from her career and went back to her birth name. Since then, she's been Tony Stark's number one fan, until four months ago in May when she suddenly emerged as a member of the mysterious team known as the Avengers, who successfully protected New York City from an alien invasion. I think I'm not alone when I say that I want to know more about this woman. First, she shows up as an aeronautic engineer, and then she plays it cool as Tony's girlfriend, and all of a sudden, she shows up as this violent person who can rip the doors off cars. Who is Grace Marks, really? What does she—_

"Mute." Tony's deadpan filled Grace's ears. The vicious-looking blonde newswoman continued to talk, but Grace couldn't hear anything she was saying, thanks to Jarvis having muted the television. Her mouth pressed into a hard, thin line as she glared at the woman on the screen. After having dated Tony Stark for two years, she was more than aware of the kind of criticism that came from being in the public eye, and she was used to it. It still didn't stop her from wanting to strangle the bitchy newswoman who seemed intent on making it a big deal that Grace had gone from simply being Tony's girlfriend to a martial arts master seemingly overnight.

Tony came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, gently kneading out the tension. She'd known that he'd entered the room and had been watching the report, too; it was impossible for anyone to sneak up on her, a feature that came with her heightened survival instincts. She leaned back against the couch and let Tony massage her shoulders, sighing in relief as her muscles began to relax.

"That's a bit of a nightmare," she murmured. Tony scoffed, his strong hands continuing to work on her.

"That bitch has it coming. Besides, SHIELD made your cover story a believable one. You just happen to be really well-trained in martial arts, and you just happen to be really strong." He shrugged. Grace sighed.

"We can't go anywhere without being bombarded," she said.

"I'm more than aware of it. Trust me, I've dealt with this my entire life. It's just gotten considerably worse since, uh, aliens dropped from the sky, and we had to join up with a group of other fucked up individuals to keep them from taking over the world."

"How long has it been since you've slept?" she asked suddenly, her voice filled with genuine concern. His hands stilled for a brief second, but then they continued.

"I could ask you the same thing, Agent Marks. You've had your nose in the books a lot recently." An edge was present in Tony's voice, and she didn't press it. He was referring to the fact that she'd been studying day and night ever since the alien attack. Whenever she returned from a particularly rough mission, she studied every subject under the sun in order to save it in her brain so that she could use it to get her out of a sticky situation in the future. She'd been studying nonstop since New York.

It hadn't escaped Tony's notice; he wasn't stupid. He'd noticed that whenever he was down in the lab, she was off somewhere in the house poring over textbooks and internet posts, absorbing every word that she read, every image of a documentary, and everything in between. He hated when she did it, and she knew he hated it, but he didn't say anything to her because he wasn't one to talk. He was basically awake all the time while he built new suits. He had to be prepared for any kind of attack; his suits were necessary. There was no way he could chastise Grace for fine-tuning her skills to stay alive when he was doing the same thing.

"You know what, why don't we go out tonight?" he asked suddenly. He hoisted himself over the couch and settled into the cushiony pillows next to her. His head was below her head level, and he looked adorable with his big, brown, puppy dog eyes gazing up at her. Not being able to help herself, she leaned down and kissed him sweetly.

"You know we'll run into the paparazzi," she said.

"Fuck it. We saved the world. We deserve a night out every now and then," he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. He took her hand in his and entwined his fingers with hers. He was always amazed at how soft her hands stayed when he knew that she used them daily in rough work. Technically, Grace was on leave. She hadn't been called in for a mission since the Chitauri invasion, and he sure as hell wasn't complaining. Director Nick Fury was giving his three agents who were a part of the Avengers a much deserved six month leave, meaning that Tony hadn't had to share her with SHIELD for the longest stretch of time that he'd ever had since they'd begun dating.

"I'll have Jarvis make a reservation at that Spanish place we like downtown. It's quiet, romantic, and relatively secluded. For downtown." He gazed at her. "Is it a date?"

Grace grinned back at him and nodded.

"Fine. It's a date."

Suddenly, an image on the screen caught her eye, and she frowned, redirecting her attention back to the TV.

"Un-mute," she said, her frown deepening by the second.

"—being honored for her work in cancer research this weekend in Washington D.C. Really, this woman is a genius. Without her breakthrough, so many more lives would've been lost." The blonde anchorwoman was smiling brightly, and Grace thought about planting her fist through the screen, but she figured that Tony probably wouldn't appreciate that, even if he had more than enough money to replace the TV. She narrowed her strange eyes at the screen as it filled with the image of her mom's picture.

Dr. Sarah Marks smiled down at Grace from Tony Stark's TV. She didn't look any older than the last time that Grace had seen her years and years ago. The last time Grace had seen her mom had been when Sarah and Andrew had dropped her off at college for the first time. Really, it was the last time she'd seen both of her parents. She tilted her head at the screen and didn't say anything.

"Hon? You ok?" Tony asked hesitantly from off to her right side. Absentmindedly, she nodded.

"Mute," she said sharply. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Tony reached out and put his hand on her knee, a comforting gesture that she needed at that moment. She continued to frown at the picture on the TV screen, but she placed her hand on top of his. That was a good sign, Tony thought to himself, and silently breathed a sigh of relief.

Any mention of Grace's mom made her shut down, and that was the last thing he wanted her to do just then. She was the glue that was so far holding him together, and if she shut down, he didn't know how he was going to work. Of course, he hadn't told her any of this. She wasn't at all aware of how bad his nightmares had been getting; she had no idea that that was the real reason he didn't sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw images that he wanted to forget about, and they didn't go away until he woke up. He hadn't breathed a word of it to Grace because she was clearly going through her own issues. She barely stopped studying these days, Jesus Christ. It bothered the hell out of him, but he knew he had no right to say anything to her about it so he didn't. He let her obsessively study, and she let him obsessively build suits. It was how they were getting by right now.

"TV isn't a good idea today," Grace said, her voice distant. Tony glanced over at her, and he could see that her mind was a thousand miles away from him. Her strange eyes were clouded over as she was somewhere else, and he applied a little bit more pressure onto her knee to bring her back. She blinked hard, and she looked at him as if she hadn't noticed he was there. Her mouth twisted to the side, and she nodded, looking like she was agreeing with something only she could hear in her head.

"Are you sure you're ok?" Tony asked against his better judgment. She flashed him a dirty look, but she nodded, saying nothing.

"You know, I got invitations for that," he said passively. Grace's head snapped towards him, her eyes alight.

"What?" she asked in shock.

"Yeah. I got invitations in the mail for the both of us to attend that banquet," he repeated.

"Why didn't you say anything?" she demanded, unsure whether to look angry or thankful. He scoffed.

"You get upset whenever anyone mentions your mother, and I try to make it a point to not upset you," he said. A tiny smile found its way onto the assassin's face, softening her features and making her look less worried. One of the perks of the Serum she'd received at the hands of Dr. Sarah Marks and Dr. Andrew Marks was the fact that no matter how much she frowned, wrinkles wouldn't form on her face. Grace always joked about it, saying that she was going to live with a frown on her face just to spite her parents.

"You're sweet," she said with that same smile on her lips. He rolled his eyes.

"Are you just now figuring this out?" he asked in mock disbelief.

"What'd you do with the invitations?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Threw them out," he monotoned. Her eyebrows rose in shock, but she nodded in what he assumed was approval.

"Did you at least RSVP?" she asked. Tony grinned. Agent Grace Marks may have hated her mother, but she still believed in being polite and RSVPing to a banquet honoring her mother because that was the right thing to do.

"Yeah, I did. I wanted to tell them hell fucking no, but I told them that we just had other plans instead. I figured that it'd be too obvious to say hell fucking no. Do you think that would've been too much?" he asked. She grinned back at him, visibly relaxing against the cushions of the couch again. Her amber eyes had lost their hostile look that she'd had when she'd been watching the TV. Now she looked chill and herself again.

"Good idea you didn't say that. As much as I despise my mom, I think it would've been a bit much. You know, I'm surprised that the media hasn't picked up on anything at all between the two of us. We have the same last name, and everyone who keeps up with Captain America knows that my dad was really involved with the expeditions to find him. It's simple math, really." She turned her head to glance at Tony, looking as if she were checking in with him to see if he were following her. He nodded firmly.

"I think that the media's a bunch of dumbass fuck ups who don't know what they're doing. They fall for any bullshit story you give them about anything. They totally would've eaten up the original story about how Iron Man was my bodyguard, but you know what, I'm Iron Man." He shrugged nonchalantly. Grace frowned, her thoughts clearly racing as she tried to make sense of what Tony was saying.

"I'm not entirely sure what you were trying to say in that last part, so I'm thinking you just threw that in there to say that you're Iron Man," she said.

"Ok, fine, so I did throw that last part in there to say I'm Iron Man. Should I not be proud to be Iron Man? I keep this country safe, Princess. I am all about world peace. I eat it, I breathe it, I sleep it. I'm Iron Man." He looked seriously at her, the intensity of his brown eyes growing. She looked back, and then she burst out laughing.

"Jesus, I swear you're too fucking much sometimes," she said with a big grin.

"Seriously? I make this big speech about what it means to be Iron Man, and you laugh at me? I didn't know it was so hard to get some support around here."

"We're like, a thousand points off from the original point," she replied. Tony rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, see, you can't even own up to the fact that you don't respect Iron Man. If you don't respect Iron Man, you don't respect me," he said simply. She rolled her eyes back at him, amused by his melodrama. She put a hand on the side of his face and let her thumb gently rub back and forth, and she winked at him.

"I totally respect Iron Man," she said quietly. He grinned up at her from his position on the couch.

"I thought so," he retorted.

"After seeing you kick ass in New York, I definitely respect you," Grace said. At the mention of New York, Tony's chest constricted, and for a moment, he couldn't breathe. He squinted his eyes to see past the yellow stars that blurred his vision, and he pushed himself to sit up more.

"Tony? Tony? Are you ok?" Grace asked, her voice laced with concern. He jerkily held up a hand and brushed her away.

"Uh, yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I'm fine. Um, so did I make the right decision by RSVPing that we wouldn't go to that banquet? If you want to go, I'm sure I can, um, contact them or…or something." His voice trailed off as he struggled to regain control over his thumping heart. Grace was next to him in a heartbeat, positioning herself so that she wasn't trapping him down but comforting him. She sat slightly behind him and rested her cheek on his shoulder, one hand resting on top of his, and the other skimming over his back. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"I'm fine," he repeated unconvincingly.

"I know you are," Grace murmured in response, but both of them knew that they were lying. They were only delaying the inevitable. Grace wasn't an idiot any more than Tony was; she could sense the changes in his breathing and heart rate whenever the mention of New York or the Chitauri came up. She saw the panicked look he got in his eyes. But she never said anything because it wasn't her place. They still had that unspoken agreement that he'd once breeched when they'd been on the helicarrier: don't talk about traumatic times.

On some level, Grace felt mildly guilty. The night that the Avengers had defeated Loki and the Chitauri, Tony had opened up to her and shared a little bit of his experience in Afghanistan. He hadn't said very much, but the little that he'd said had spoken volumes. He couldn't have said more about his time there than if he'd written a goddamn book about it. He'd let her in on the most traumatic experience of his life, and she still hadn't told him very much at all about her time in captivity in South America, the event that had been most traumatizing for her. But now wasn't the time to talk about it. The time _would _come; it just wasn't now.

And since the time wasn't now, she continued to move her hand over Tony's back, pretending that she was doing it just because she loved him and not because she wanted to calm him down. He was quiet, and he let her keep touching him. Her touch was the most soothing thing in the world for him, and he could never get enough of it. The sex was on point with the two of them; it always was. Each time he moved inside her was like the first time. It never got boring, and it never was quite the same each time they joined together. Whether she touched him to comfort him or stimulate him, she was soothing to him.

"I love you, ok?" he said quietly to her. The smile that split across her face was enough answer for him. She beamed back at him like she was an actual ray of sunshine. He lived for those moments.

"I love you, ok," she replied and planted a kiss on his shoulder, the closest place to her. She was quiet, and he noticed a darkness cross her face for a brief second as she looked away from him. She looked back up to face him, but the darkness was gone. In its place was a perplexed, strange expression that he wasn't sure he'd ever seen her wear on her face. Grace wasn't the one to have many facial expressions, so he considered himself somewhat knowledgeable on identifying what her facial expressions actually were.

"I hate my mom. Have I ever said that?" she asked softly. He shook his head.

"You haven't said it. But I've been able to figure that out. You know. Every time you hear someone mention her, you look like you want to murder her. I would think you'd want to murder people you hate," he said with a shrug. She considered this, tilting her head to the side. "Actually, I guess I'm wrong. You murder the people that SHIELD tells you to murder."

"Correction: I take down targets," Grace replied ambiguously.

"Oh, ok. That makes it so much better," Tony answered with an eyeroll. She smacked him lightly on the back but then kissed his shoulder again.

"Anyway, I hate my mom, and you need to make reservations for tonight," she said. He frowned.

"Reservations?"

"Tony, we're having date night tonight. It was totally your idea. Don't tell me you forgot," she said, giving him an icy stare.

"I didn't forget!" He'd totally forgotten.

"I don't believe you."

"Jarvis, please call Seville, and make a reservation for 5:30 tonight at our usual table," he announced, giving Grace a determined look.

"Right away, sir," Jarvis replied.

"You only did it because I reminded you," Grace murmured, leaning in closer towards his mouth. Her lips were centimeters away from his, and he couldn't help glancing down at how wonderful her mouth looked. He licked his lips.

"I'm Iron Man." And then he kissed her and forgot about everything in the world except for her.


	2. Deja Vouz

**Wooo shoutouts to bluemermaidpitch, MicroSpider, MsRose91, and byakuya7309 for reviews! Keep leaving me your thoughts, y'all!**

**This chapter is really going to throw y'all into a spin, I think. Things are definitely taking a different turn for Grace and Tony heh heh**

**Oh, like I mentioned in the A/N of the last chapter of Acting on Instinct, I'm thinking about writing a Natasha/Clint Budapest story. Is there any interest in that? Leave your opinions in the reviews and/or PMs!**

**So yeah, please review this chapter and let me know what you honestly think =)**

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Chapter 2

_Oh, God…oh, God, Tony. Come back. Come back to me._

_Tony._

_Tony._

"Tony."

Tony roughly jolted awake, his breath coming out raggedly as he struggled for breath. His throat was tight, and his heart was racing at a thousand beats per minute. Panicked, he moved his limbs about him, trying to reach out for something to hold on. He couldn't see; everything was black. His hand collided with something to the right of him, and he felt hands on him, grabbing.

"Tony." The voice came again, and his heart slowed as he realized that the voice was coming from Grace. His vision cleared, and he saw her standing inches away from him, her face next to his, looking concerned and upset as she gazed at him.

"Oh…I-I must've fallen asleep," he mumbled cautiously, not making eye contact with her. He could feel the burn of her amber eyes searing a hole through his skull. Blearily, he ran a hand through his hair and sighed. It was always the same dream whenever he closed his eyes. A loss of consciousness for him meant that he would be back in the wormhole, falling, hearing Grace hysterically calling to him through the fuzziness of his brain. He closed his eyes, still continuing to ignore Grace's hot stare, and tried to clear his mind of everything. He was home. He was in Malibu. Grace was next to him.

"Baby," she whispered painfully and leaned forward, taking his head in her hands and pulling him towards her. He rested his temple against her chest and let her touch him, each touch soothing him and healing him bit by bit. His pride was more wounded than anything; he'd been doing a pretty good job of keeping her off the scent of his nightmares so far, he thought. However, he wasn't going to admit to it just yet because he couldn't. Grace was no more stable than he was, and he couldn't add anything else to her load. Besides, his nightmares would go away after a bit more time. He couldn't expect them to disappear just like that when everything was still so recent, right? This was normal, right?

"I was taking a nap," he said with a shrug and turned his face towards hers, lifting her chin with a finger and kissing her on the mouth. He shifted his body so that he was open to her, and he reached out and pulled her into him. The lower half of her body rested against him, the top half leaning back while she looked down at him. Her hands were lightly resting on top of his arc reactor, carefully tracing the rim of it through his shirt.

"We need to leave shortly to make our reservations," she said softly, moving her hands up to his face and running them over his beard. He smiled at her and closed his eyes, wrinkling his nose at her.

"Well, what are we waiting for then? I'm waiting on you," he said, standing up and winking at her playfully as if nothing were wrong. She grinned back at him and hip-checked him before walking out of the room.

"And now I'm waiting on you. Go change. You smell like grease." She walked out before he could say anything in protest. He looked down at his clothes, examining them. Hmmm. He did look like he was covered in it. He checked the clock, seeing that he had enough time to jump in the shower and freshen up real quick, and he sauntered out of the lab and up the stairs. When he got to his room, Grace was already in the closet trying to figure out what to wear for their date night. Silently, he slipped into the bathroom and into the shower. He didn't think he could bear to look at her just now.

Truthfully, there was a reason that he'd suggested going out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants that night. In fact, he was planning on doing more than just going out to dinner. They were going to go out to dinner, and when they were done eating, he was going to drive to a place that had significant meaning to the both of them because he had something he needed to tell her. He had an idea of how she was going to react, but he needed to tell her the right way. Lately, he hadn't been able to do anything right except work on his suits, and he was aware of that. He'd been neglecting Grace more and more, and he hadn't done very much socially since New York. Rhodey had called a few times, but Tony tried to avoid talking to him. Really, now that he thought about it with the hot water beating down on him, the only people he actually talked to these days were Grace, Jarvis, and Pepper.

Pepper knew that something was wrong with him; she hadn't worked with him for so long to not be able to know him well, but she knew him well enough to know better than to mention anything to him. He could see the conflict in her eyes every time he saw her, the urge to ask him what had happened to him combatting the good sense that told her not to. It was the same look Grace had given him when she'd woken him up from his "nap" just moments ago. She, like Pepper, had the good sense to let it go.

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Ever since Grace had seen the special about her mom on the news, she'd been in a horrible mood all day. She'd taken to studying bacteria with a new kind of passion that could only have been derived from wanting to drive her mom out of her brain. She sighed and studied herself in the restaurant's bathroom mirror, taking in every feature that she had.

In a lot of ways, Grace looked like her mom. She had the same dark hair and small frame that Sarah had. However, she looked a lot like her dad with the set of her jaw and the way her nose sloped. Her eyes were something that were completely her own, something that neither one of her parents had possessed. Rationally, Grace knew that they had to be from a relative somewhere down the line, but she liked knowing that something was _hers_, not something that had come from her parents.

She couldn't deny where she came from, no matter how much she wanted to. Her family was her family, and their blood ran in her veins, mixed with the Serum that her parents had injected her with. If she let herself remember it, she could recall every single detail of the day she'd been injected. She remembered how her parents had told her to hold still, she'd only feel a prick. They told her they were making her strong. They told her she would be ok. They'd been right about the prick, but they hadn't told her about the pain. As soon as Grace allowed herself to make it that far through the memory, she shut her brain off. The images were gone, and she was still standing in the women's bathroom staring at herself, wide-eyed and panicky.

Self-consciously, she smoothed her long dark hair and walked out of the bathroom and back to the booth where Tony was sitting. They'd just finished their dinner, and they were getting ready to leave. He lit up when he saw her, his dark chocolate eyes instantly brightening. Her heart melted as she saw how eager he was to see her again, as if he'd missed her the entire time she'd been in the bathroom. He eased himself out of the booth and held his arm out to her in a grandiose, overdramatic gesture.

"Shall we, Miss Marks?" he asked quietly as she took his offered arm. "Actually, for old times' sake and for kicks, should I say, Miss Marcussen?"

Grace threw back her head and laughed as she heard the alias she'd used when she'd first started monitoring him come out of his mouth. It'd been forever since she'd heard him say it. Old, pleasant memories came rushing back to her, replacing the miserable ones she'd allowed herself to face in the bathroom, and she smiled as she remembered the one week it'd taken her to fall in love with the billionaire.

"Jesus, it's been a long time," she said, walking along beside him as they walked out to the curb. Tony gave the valet his ticket, and the man, eyes the size of saucers at being so close to the infamous Tony Stark and Grace Marks, quickly scampered off to retrieve the flashy car that Tony had driven there sans Happy Hogan. It wasn't unusual for Tony to drive his cars; he certainly loved the attention that they got him, even if people didn't know that it was him driving.

"Has it been that long?" Tony asked mildly.

"Feels like it in some ways. Just think: that was before Justin Hammer got locked up," Grace answered with a snicker. A huge grin split Tony's face, and he looked down at her, excitement and enjoyment clearly written all over him. A tiny bit of relief found its way into Grace's brain as she saw how carefree he was. It'd been a long time since she'd seen him look so…so Tony, and it made her chest ache to realize how much she'd really missed him.

"You know, sometimes I forget he existed," Tony said, his grin still lighting up his face. "I mean, hell, I'm not complaining. Oh, and how could I ever forget that that was when the redheaded traitor made her presence known. Now that I think about it, it's weird seeing her without her little sidekick. What are they up to now these days?"

"They're lying low and keeping as quiet as they can without drawing attention to themselves. This is the longest amount of time that they've had downtime together, so they're making the most of it," Grace replied.

"Much like we are, huh?" Tony asked.

"Yeah, actually. I think this is the first time ever that we've been able to go out without cameras following us. God, why didn't I notice that before? How the fuck did that get past me?" For a moment, Grace looked genuinely concerned that she hadn't noticed it, but the moment passed, and she was back to looking her usually placid self. An eeriness settled over her; she was usually so perceptive, and she hadn't noticed the whole night that there hadn't been a single goddamn camera wanting to catch a shot of her eating refried beans. Though truth be told, she'd been so focused on keeping Tony alert and on topic instead of thinking about whatever it was that made him freak out that it almost didn't really surprise her that she hadn't noticed the lack of paparazzi.

"I'm pretty good, aren't I? It's ok, you can say it. I'm Iron Man, so I hear it a lot," he said with a casual shrug of his shoulders. Grace frowned and tilted her head as she studied him. There were often times that she didn't quite understand what he was saying, and this was one of those moments where she didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

"What?" she asked, her voice rising in pitch. He sighed as if the answer were obvious.

"I'm not trying to toot my own horn—"

"Bullshit."

"Rude. Interrupting. You lose a point, Miss Marks. _Anyway_, I'm not trying to brag or anything, but maybe I had Happy give a tip off to the paps that we were going somewhere else tonight so they wouldn't bother us," Tony finished with a nonplussed expression lining his face.

"You didn't," Grace said.

"Uh, yeah, I did, Princes. You're welcome. Hey, here's the car. Thank you, my good man. Keep the change." He opened the car door for a stunned Grace. She hadn't expected Tony to do something like that. Instantly, she smelled something fishy, though figuratively. Tony only really went out of his way when something really wrong was going on, and he was trying to figure out how to say it. In fact, she'd witnessed this firsthand when he'd made a sad attempt at cooking an omelet for Pepper when he'd wanted to tell her he was dying from palladium poisoning. Her guard went up as she processed what he was saying, but she showed no sign of it on her face. Instead, she smiled up at him and got into the seat, watching him as he closed the door behind her and crossed to the other side.

Basically, the second that Tony's ass hit the driver's seat, he turned the music on. His typical AC/DC blasted through the speakers and hit Grace in the middle of her skull, causing her to wince slightly since her ears were so overly sensitive. Tony noticed and immediately turned the music down; the volume hadn't been so bad when they'd driven down because the top of the convertible had been down, but now that they were in an enclosed space, he knew that the volume would be brutal to Grace's sensitive ears.

When he drove up to the exit, he took a right. If he'd been going home, he would've taken a left. Suspicion settled into Grace's bones as she saw that they were going the opposite direction from home. She looked over at Tony, who was quietly singing to AC/DC and not seeming to notice that he was driving somewhere that was not their house. She thought about saying something, but she didn't. The billionaire was obviously up to something, and she was curious to see what was going to happen. She also felt nervous because what if he came out with something like, oh, maybe he was dying again?

A bubble of anxiety rose in her stomach, but she kept it down. Surely, he wasn't dying. If he were dying, she would've picked up on it by now…right? Admittedly, she hadn't been spending that much time around him because he was usually so busy working on his suits, and she was always researching, so she couldn't have been able to see if there were any signs that he were dying. She looked out the window and told herself that she was being ridiculous.

"Where are we going?" she asked. "This isn't the way home."

"We're taking a little detour," Tony replied easily, his voice sounding as calm as his face showed.

"Wait, you're not going to kill me, are you? This hasn't been some elaborate scheme to get me to open up to you so then you can murder me, right?" The humor was present in Grace's words, so that he'd know she was kidding. He grinned, but he shook his head.

"Nope. If I wanted to murder you, I would've put the suit on," he answered.

"Huh. Touche." She sat quietly out the window, thinking of where on Earth he could possibly be driving. The miles ticked by, and so did the minutes, and she wasn't getting much closer to a conclusion. Then it hit her like a ton of bricks. She'd been on this road before; in fact, she'd driven it many times, and she knew it like the back of her hand. Frowning, she looked over at Tony. He knew she knew where she was, but he was showing no reaction, acting as if he didn't even notice she were looking at him.

"We're going to SHIELD Headquarters," she said suddenly.

"We do happen to be on the road that leads there," Tony answered, again showing no trace of a reaction. For the first time in her entire life, Grace was being given a taste of her own medicine, and she had to admit that it was frustrating the hell out of her. She ran a hand through her hair and propped her elbow up on the window, resting her head in her palm.

"Why are we going to SHIELD?" she asked. "I have plenty of time left off. Are you in trouble or something?"

Tony scoffed.

"No, I'm not in trouble. I've behaved like an angel since the last time I was around Fury," he replied, sounding almost slightly insulted. She looked out the window, not saying anything in response. What the fuck was going on?

Sure enough, within a few moments, Tony pulled up to the security gate at SHIELD. He scanned in with the badge he'd received right after the New York incident had happened. Everyone who hadn't previously had a SHIELD badge—basically everyone save for Natasha, Clint, and Grace—now had one, and that meant that Tony could access SHIELD Headquarters and certain pieces of SHIELD information with his badge. Then again, all he really needed to do was hack into the system, and he'd be allowed in. He'd done it before.

Tony parked the car and got out. Grace remained in the car, staring in shock at him as he began walking into the building. When he realized that she wasn't walking with him, he turned around in exasperation and beckoned her to come on. Cautiously, Grace got out of the car and shut the door behind her. Tony locked it and gestured to her again.

"Come on, sweetheart, while I'm still young," he called to her. She hesitantly walked towards him, a strange look plastered onto her face. Suspicion was practically radiating off of her, and Tony had to force himself not to look like he was enjoying what was happening. He slung an arm around her shoulders and sauntered into the building that Grace was so familiar with.

Out of habit, Grace pulled her shoulders back and walked tall, the way she did whenever she was at work. It just came naturally to her, and she couldn't help doing it. Tony felt her doing it beneath his arm, and he grinned to himself. So far, he'd had a shit ton of fun being able to shock the hell out of her, but the night of surprises wasn't over quite yet.

"Hey, buddy, would you mind moving?" he called out to the young agent who was sitting behind the security desk. Grace vividly remembered the two weeks that she'd had to spend on partial restriction behind that desk. Her confusion and worry only deepened as Tony asked the young desk agent to move.

"I won't be able to do that, sir," the agent replied. Tony sighed irritably.

"This'll only take a few minutes. Do you know who I am? I'm Tony Stark. Iron Man. Part of the Avengers," he said.

"I know who you are, Mr. Stark. I'm not authorized to leave this desk," the young agent answered, looking slightly worried. Grace stepped forward and made eye contact, her amber eyes alight and flaming.

"Agent, I'm going to have to ask you to vacate the premises until I give you the clear. Do you understand?" she asked professionally. Her voice was clear and firm. She pulled out her SHIELD ID card and watched the expression on the agent's face change as he realized that she had a much higher clearance than he did, and she wasn't fucking around with him.

"I understand," he said and carefully got up and walked away, his eyes lingering suspiciously on Tony for an extra second. Tony watched the young man leave, and once he'd left, the billionaire turned to Grace.

"Goddamn, you always amaze me with your authority here. How do you do it? I walk in, and no one seems to give a shit, and then you flash your ID, and everyone falls at your feet," he said with a smirk. She grinned back at him.

"I'm one of them. I can give them orders. Technically, if they didn't listen to me, I could have their jobs," she said with a nonplussed shrug.

"A woman in charge. I've always liked that. Anyway, Agent, I didn't drive all the way here for you to flash your badge and show off your authority, even though I find all of that incredibly sexy. Now, if you'd be so kind as to take a seat behind this desk in that desk chair." Tony pointed towards the only desk chair as if Grace hadn't seen it. She crossed her arms across her chest and surveyed him with an expression that told him he was going to have to fight her on this one. He heaved a sigh and ran a hand over his face.

"Come on. Take a load off. It'll be fun," he said.

"I don't know what it is you're doing, Mr. Stark. You certainly have me worried," Grace answered as she obeyed Tony and walked behind the desk. She plopped down into the chair and gazed up at him questioningly. He leaned forward on the desk and looked at her.

"Ok. Excellent. Perfect. Uh, alright. Ok. Ok. Um, this is an information desk, right?" he asked sincerely. She wrinkled her forehead, feeling strangely like this was deja vouz.

"No, no, it's not," she said.

"That's too bad because I was hoping you could help me," he said. She blinked. He was still staring at her sincerely.

"What do you need help with?" she asked slowly.

"Ok, uh, you see, I've been seeing this great girl for about two and a half years now, and you know, she's wonderful. She's the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I can honestly say that with all my heart. She keeps me grounded. She keeps me sane. She's always there for me, and she doesn't take any of my shit, and I come with a lot of shit. It's a lot. She's a saint. Anyway, we've been together for two and a half years, more or less, and I want to ask her to marry me. I've always known that there was no one else I'd rather spend the rest of my life with, but it wasn't until recently that I realized how…how much I need her. I don't want to live without her, you know?" Tony finished slowly, looking at Grace with those big brown eyes of his, waiting for a reaction. Grace's hands had flown up to her mouth as soon as he'd said the words "I want to ask her to marry me." He knew he'd always remember her reaction. She looked stunning, even in the florescent lights that SHIELD loved, with her light eyes wide, her mouth slightly open, and her cheeks very subtly flushed.

"Tony," she breathed tearfully.

"I was just wondering if you could help me with that," he said. She nodded her head viciously as she fought back the tears. He crossed behind the desk, and he got down on one knee, and he was holding a ring, and she was crying, and this was all so unexpected, and she was still crying as she looked down at him in front of her.

"Grace Elizabeth Marks, will you marry me?" he asked.

"Yes. Yes. Jesus Christ, I'll fucking marry you," she answered with a smile. His face lit up like a Christmas tree, and she was crying as he slid the ring on her finger. "It fits perfectly. How'd you pull this off?"

"Jarvis," Tony replied with a shrug. She laughed tearfully and pulled him in a tight hug.

"Holy shit, Tony," she said. "I love you. I love you so much."

"I love you, too, Agent," he said against her shoulder.

"Wait." She pulled back. "I'll only agree to this on one condition."

Tony frowned.

"What?" he asked, anxiety creeping into his bloodstream.

"We have combined last names. Stark-Marks," she said with a serious face. For an agonizingly long moment, he stared at her in horror, not quite sure what to say. Suddenly, she burst out laughing and shook her head. "I couldn't even keep a straight face. Holy shit, I can't stop smiling." She began crying all over again, but this time she was laughing. She pulled him back into a hug and rested her head on him.

"I thought you were going to tell me you were dying," she said with a sniff.

"Nope. Not dying. Very much alive."

"I can't believe you did this. It's exactly like the time you told me you loved me for the first time," she murmured. "All those memories."

"I did that on purpose. See, you say I don't have a romantic bone in my body, and I totally do. Well, Mrs. Soon-To-Be-Stark. Do you want to go home and, you know, make some more memories?" he murmured in her ear. She pulled back from him again with a wicked grin on her face.

"Well, come on then. I'm waiting on you."

As she led him out to the car, ring on her hand and a smile on her face, things finally felt like they were taking a step forward. She and Tony were now fucking engaged after he'd been talking about it for a damn year. He hadn't freaked out at all during dinner, and she hadn't thought about her mom except for her time in the bathroom mirror. Her mom. She forced the thoughts out of her head. She wasn't going to focus on something so depressing at a time like this. Tony had just proposed to her and given her a goddamn ring; she was going to focus on him and him alone.


	3. Needles

**Shoutouts to Uruvia, MicroSpider, MsRose91, byakuya7309, and bluemermaidpitch for reviewing!**

**Ok, now we're starting to heat up a little bit, getting a little darker. A special guest will be coming up within the next few chapters (not entirely sure which chapter yet but very, very soon), so pay attention to any foreshadowing in this chapter. Trust me, the foreshadowing exists ;)**

**So, yeah, Tony and Grace are engaged now finally! Sorry for the cheese and corniness with the last chapter and even kind of with this chapter, but I'm a romance girl at heart, and I couldn't help it. I'm all about the fluff, man. I'm probably not going to write the wedding in this story, nor will it be in Iron Man 3 because I have no idea if they're going to incorporate any kind of Pepper/Tony marriage into future movies, and I'd like to follow along movie-verse for as long as I can. Who knows! Just more to play with =) My Iron Man 3 fic is going to be a loooooot of fun to play with because it's so Tony/Pepper-based that I'll have to find ways to make it Grace's story instead of Pepper's.**

**Please continue leaving reviews! Let me know your thoughts. Do y'all want any smut anytime soon because I can arrange that ;) (Also, I've noticed that every single one of my stories has an M rating hahaha oops, what can I say!) What do you like? What don't you like? What do you want more of? What do you want less of?**

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Chapter 3

The next morning, Tony woke up with the deep, delicious kind of soreness in his muscles that only came from a night filled with lots and lots of sex. He rolled onto his side and glanced at a still soundly sleeping Grace. She was lying on her stomach with her head facing him. Her lovely mouth was closed as she slept, and her hair was tossed all around her on the pillow, almost as if it were framing her. Tony wondered when the hell had he become romantic as he gazed at her. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever in his life had he been all that romantic. In the past if he'd been seeing a girl whenever Valentine's Day rolled around, sure, he'd take her out to dinner, get her some nice flowers, maybe even a piece of jewelry. It was what he was supposed to do, and he'd done it for that very reason. Well, technically, he'd had _Pepper _take care of all of it while he was off doing whatever the fuck it was he used to do before he built suits, and she'd send him a text informing him of his plans so he wouldn't be late. Or at least more than an hour late.

Now, he was taken aback just looking at himself. He'd fallen in love with a girl he'd only known for a week, he'd invited her to move in with him pretty shortly after that week, he went out of his way to do nice things for her such as make coffee or braid her hair, he called her cute little endearments, and he'd gone out looking for a ring that he'd thought she'd like. Yes. Tony Stark had gone ring shopping. He'd even gone out of his way to have Pepper come with him to give female perspective and also because she was his best friend. As much as Tony loved Rhodey, Pepper Potts was the one person aside from Grace that he trusted with his entire life because she'd taken care of his life for him for 10 years. There was a definite trust there that Tony would never be able to deny.

He'd coerced Pepper into his secret conspiracy when Grace had gone on her last mission before she'd been called back for the Avengers. Of course, Pepper had been beyond delighted to help Tony choose a ring, and she'd been really helpful. After two days and nights of searching and not being able to find anything, Tony had decided to get one designed special just for Grace. The ring was designed to kind of suggest an electron configuration chart for palladium—he thought that it was a nice irony; they'd been brought together because of palladium—but it also kind of resembled an arc reactor, he realized. If anything, though, it was fitting because she'd once told him that the arc reactor was his life source, and he was her life source. Therefore, the arc reactor was her life source, too. If that made any sense in his shitty poetical mind, he thought with a grin to himself.

It also hadn't escaped his notice that for the first time in God knew how long, he'd slept without any nightmares. When he'd finally drifted off to sleep, he hadn't fallen through space alone, landing on the ground and hearing Grace's heartbreaking sobs. When he'd reached unconsciousness, he'd dreamt of nothing, and that was a beautiful thing for him to realize.

Carefully, so as not to wake Grace up, he slipped out of bed and into the bathroom where he brushed his teeth. He knew that she would insist he brush his teeth before he kissed her, so he figured that it was better to be one step ahead. After brushing his teeth, he quietly walked out into the hall and down the corridor until he got to the kitchen. He began his process of starting coffee, the way he knew that Grace liked it. Within a few minutes, the coffee was done, and he put two sugars and two creams in Grace's, and none in his—he was a black coffee kind of guy—before starting back to the room.

"Good morning, Jarvis," he said as he walked down the hall.

"Good morning, sir. Or shall I say congratulations," the artificial intelligence replied. Tony grinned.

"Thank you, buddy. It means a lot," he answered.

"My condolences go out to Agent Marks," Jarvis said calmly. Tony was in such a damn good mood that he couldn't even find it in him to glare at his computer friend. Instead, he smiled and shook his head.

"I know, man, I know," he said. He walked into the bedroom and found that Grace wasn't in bed. She poked her dark head around the corner of the bathroom and looked at him, a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth. She grinned when she saw him and waved. Her dark hair was tousled and crazy, and Tony couldn't decide whether she looked like a wild animal or a sexy beast. He decided to go with both because she looked strangely adorable.

"Brought you coffee," he said, holding up the mugs. Her amber eyes flicked over to the mug that she knew had hers in it, and she beamed even brighter. She disappeared around the corner, and he could hear her rinsing and spitting. He got back in the bed, placing his coffee on his nightstand so that it could cool. She walked back over to him and climbed in next to him, taking her mug and holding it in her hands.

"Mmm, smells perfect," she mumbled sleepily.

"Yeah," he said, looking over at her. "Perfect."

* * *

As Grace held the phone to her ear, she slowly let her lungs fill with oxygen, and she listened to the brassy ring. Glancing at the clock, she noticed that it was only noon. Tony was down in the lab, saying that he was going to work on his latest suit for an hour or so at most. She knew that he'd be down there for several hours. As much as he loved her, and as excited as he was over being engaged to her finally, he was Tony Stark, and he had to work on his suits. His brain might literally explode if he kept all of those ideas in his head, anyway.

The phone had rung four times already, and it still hadn't gone over to voicemail. She counted silently in her head: _1…2…_

"Hello?" The cautious, no-nonsense voice of Natasha Romanoff picked the phone up. Grace smiled to herself. The redheaded agent always let the phone ring four times before she picked the phone up; Grace was never sure if she did it on purpose or not, but she didn't really care.

"Hey, it's Grace," she said.

"Oh, hey!" Natasha said. "Long time, no see, stranger. How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine. Great. I'm fine. Hey, listen, I wanted to talk to you about something. I know you and Clint don't get a lot of time together, so I won't keep you for long, but quick question: would you and Clint ever get married?" she asked. Natasha laughed without pausing.

"What? No. No, we wouldn't. It's too risky. Too dangerous. Why?"

"I was just curious because the two of you have been together for a long time," Grace replied mildly.

"We haven't been together. We've existed together," Natasha corrected.

"Because there's a difference?" Grace grinned into the phone.

"Yeah, there's a difference. You can be with anyone. You can be with Steve, you can be with Fury, you can be with Emerson. But you can't exist with someone. Existing is being yourself. No barriers. No fakeness. Nothing but you."

Grace was quiet as she thought about what Natasha said. She'd known that her friend was a cavern of intellectual thoughts on logic and reason, but it was always struck her whenever Natasha came out with anything on emotions, a topic that Natasha tried to steer clear of. Never had she doubted Natasha's feelings for Clint; if anyone ever had, all they had to do was look at how Natasha had acted throughout the entire time on the helicarrier when Clint had been hypnotized by Loki. The green-eyed assassin had been a wreck on the inside, but no one would've guessed it by looking at her from the outside.

"Grace, you're not going to do something crazy, are you?" Natasha asked, her low voice filling with suspicion.

"Do I ever?" Grace replied with a smirk.

"Oh my God. He proposed to you. Stark proposed," Natasha said suddenly.

"I never said that," Grace answered irritably.

"Grace Marks, I think that you forget I'm also a trained SHIELD agent. I might not be as good at reading people and picking up on things as you are, but I'm still damn good at it, and I think I know you well enough to know if Tony Stark has asked you to marry him. How didn't I see it before? You never call me with questions about marriage. Holy shit, how the hell did I get this far into the conversation and not realize it?"

"Nat," Grace monotoned.

"Don't you dare try to deny it, you filthy little liar."

Grace sighed in defeat.

"If you breathe a word to anyone, I swear to God, I will hunt you down and kill you. You know I can do it, too," she snapped only half-heartedly into the phone. "We haven't even gone public with it yet. No one knows."

Natasha let out a melodic laugh, the music of her voice floating through the phone and lulling itself into Grace's brain.

"I've always thought you were nuts for getting involved with Stark in the first place, and now you're getting married to the guy," she said, almost a hint of nostalgia creeping into her voice. Grace could picture Natasha, her green eyes bright as she looked off into the distance, most likely at Clint.

"I think I'm nuts, too," Grace responded with a short laugh.

"My first instinct is to lecture you, but I know you're well aware of the risks," Natasha said, her voice suddenly turning serious. Grace frowned, her amber eyes staring straight ahead of her as she listened to the obvious change in her friend.

"I know," she said softly. "Every survival instinct tells me that this is one of the most dangerous places to be…in the spotlight, you know? I'm supposed to be unnoticed, look like an every day person, but basically everyone all over the globe knows my name and my face. I'm well aware of the fact that by staying in the spotlight like this makes me an even bigger target, but honestly, Nat, this is the one place in the whole entire world where I feel safe. I've never felt that before. I know you know what that's like."

Natasha was quiet on the other end, and Grace knew that she'd gotten to her.

"Yeah. I know," the redhead responded softly, a trace of smile hidden in her coded voice.

"I was also hoping to get a maid of honor out of this phone call," Grace said.

"No. You are not," Natasha replied threateningly.

"You bet I am," Grace answered with a grin.

"Grace, you know I can't do that lovey-dovey shit."

"Says the woman who's been in love with Clint Barton for God knows how many years," Grace quipped. Natasha groaned.

"Fine. Fine. I'll do it. You owe me."

"I know I do. Thank you. Hey, I'll let you go now. Tell Clint I said hi, ok?"

"Will do. Say hi to Stark or something. Whatever you think is politest."

Grace laughed. "Will do. Bye, Nat."

"Bye, you engaged little shit."

Grace had a huge grin on her face when she hung up the phone. Admittedly, things were a little weird whenever Natasha wasn't just around the corner from her. They'd been close friends ever since Grace had been brought into SHIELD. Well, they became friends _after _Natasha had recovered from the head wound that Grace had nearly killed her with, but that wasn't the point. The point was that they'd been friends for a long time, living right next to each other at SHIELD Headquarters, and Grace found it strange that she didn't see Natasha nearly as much as she used to. They still had their rooms at SHIELD because sometimes it was easier to stay a few nights there instead of go home if they were preparing for a mission. Things never stayed the same.

As she thought about that, she thought back to her relationship with her parents. That was the only thing that she could think of that basically stayed the same. She hadn't been an overly affectionate little kid; she'd always been very cautious, very apprehensive of everyone. Her parents had only enhanced that side of her when they'd given her the Serum; she'd only become even more apprehensive and cautious, and this time it included her own parents, for they were the ones who had put her through the traumatizing procedure.

When she'd regained consciousness, after having blacked out from the pain, even at four years old, she'd set up a wall between herself and the two scientists who had happened to create her. From that moment on, she'd set the boundaries, and nothing changed between them. Things had been the same up until she'd been taken captive in South America, and she'd had to put her survival skills to the test if she'd wanted to make it out of there outside a body bag. She'd come back to the United States after her escape, and she still had that wall in place. The only thing that was different was the fact that her father was dead. He was dead, and she wasn't.

She looked down at her hands and saw that she'd been gripping them hard. She unlocked her fingers apart from each other, ignoring the red skin as the blood rushed back into the isolated parts that she'd been holding so tightly, and she stood up. Now was the perfect time to find Tony and just look at him if nothing else. Whenever she thought about her parents, it didn't exactly put her in a good mood, and she wanted to be in one because she was engaged, and she didn't want to live in such a miserable time of her life.

Her hands were shaking the slightest bit, but she stood up and began walking down the stairs into the lab. When she punched in the access code and walked in, she didn't see him. The AC/DC music was blaring—as usual; Jesus, he didn't listen to anything else, she thought—but the genius, billionaire, former playboy now engaged, philanthropist was nowhere to be seen.

His presence was powerful, and she sensed him behind her. She turned to face him, and when she did, her heart seized up, and she quickly backed up, letting out a strangled noise that didn't quite have a particular sound. Her nerves went white-hot in that familiar way that signaled she was going into survival mode. He was holding something that at first glance looked like a needle, but now that she was away from it, she could see that it wasn't. Her hands were shaking hard now, and she couldn't seem to stop them. Gasps were escaping from her mouth, and she was standing there with one hand covering her mouth to keep everything inside and the other on one of his work tables to steady her.

"Holy shit, Grace," Tony said, instantly freezing. He saw the terrified look in her eyes, and that was when he noticed that her eyes had gone black, the way they did only when she was in survival mode. Carefully, he set down the needle-looking thing and stood at a good distance away from her. If he made a move that she deemed as threatening, she could snap his neck in a heartbeat. She was already recovering from the initial shock, tensing her muscles and gearing up in defense of an attack.

"Sweetheart, you're ok," he said soothingly. She lifted her hand that had been on the table, and he saw blood streaming from her hand, a metal cutter having been what she'd landed her hand on in her shock and panic. Anxiously, he ran a hand over his face. "Grace? Honey, you're bleeding."

She didn't say anything, backing up from him slowly and not taking her eyes off of him. Tony wanted to slide down his own blank look that he'd refined since he'd been dating Grace, but he just couldn't; that would mean shutting her out, and that was probably one of the worst things he could do in this situation. Other than full out attacking her. That'd be pretty bad, too.

This was the first time in all two and a half years that Grace had ever turned on him. The thought was almost paralyzing as it sank in that she felt threatened by him, and that was why she had entered into survival mode in the first place. Blood gushed from her hand, and he was itching to get over there and fix it up for her.

"Grace, you're bleeding," he said slowly. "I'm not going to hurt you. You're ok. You're not in danger. You're safe. You're safe, Grace. I'm here, and I'd never hurt you in a thousand years. You're _safe_." He stressed the word safe, knowing that it was one of the words she repeated over and over in her brain to get herself to come down out of survival mode.

"You're safe," he repeated. As if on cue, he could see her eyes begin to slowly lighten, but she was still shaking.

"Hon?" he asked, carefully taking a step towards her. She looked at him, almost in panic, as if she were seeing him for the first time. He could see the effort it took for her to stay calm and keep herself under control. Cautiously, he reached out a hand towards her, waiting for her to come the rest of the way to him. For a moment, it looked as though she were going to enter survival mode again, but she reached out with her non-bloody hand and gripped his outstretched hand firmly. He pulled her to him, and he took her in his arms. It didn't even occur to him that her blood was going to get on his shirt, and frankly, if it _had _occurred to him, he wouldn't have given half a shit.

She was shaking violently, but she wasn't crying as she rested her head on his chest, right by his arc reactor.

"I thought you had a needle," she said, her voice coming out haltingly, as if she were having difficult speaking and getting the words out. His hands rubbed her back soothingly, spreading wide over the map of her, reacquainting themselves with something they hadn't intimately touched in only a matter of a few hours. Guilt hit him hard in the gut as he realized that he'd been careless; of course she got antsy around needles. Then again, he hadn't known that she was down in the lab, but when he saw her, he should've set it down instead of approaching her. Nonetheless, her reaction still scared the shit out of him. This was the most out of control he'd ever seen her since the incident in New York, and it wasn't like her at all.

If Grace had been herself, she might've eyed the needle and kept a close watch on it, but she wouldn't have freaked out and gone straight into survival mode without a second thought the way she had. This was what he'd been meaning when he'd acknowledged that she was just as fucked up as he was since New York; she was barely sleeping because she was researching, and she always seemed to be on edge. This incident, however, was the first time that she'd really seemed to go over the edge, and it'd only confirmed his suspicions that she wasn't exactly ok.

Half of him wanted to say something, to call her out on it because this wasn't a normal reaction for her, someone who always had a good solid lid on it. Hell, she was the most stable person that he'd ever known in his entire life, and that was particularly huge, considering her upsetting background. If anyone had a right to be unstable, it was Agent Grace Marks, but that just wasn't her style. When she was normal, she was cool, calm, and collected, and she was more stable than a newly built table. So the fact that she had freaked out so violently and so suddenly told him that something was severely wrong. But he didn't say anything because if he said something about her, she'd say something about him, and he didn't want to sit there and listen to her talk about how worried she was over how he wasn't sleeping. He was fine. He was just having a few nightmares, and they'd go away soon. Besides, it only meant that he had more time to work on his suits, and he had so many ideas that it just seemed to be perfect timing. He was totally fine. He just had perfect timing.

"Hey, can I bandage you up?" he asked softly. As he'd held her, she'd slowly stopped shaking, and she was calm and still in his arms. She paused, but then she nodded. He directed her to a chair and sat her down, quickly rushing across the room to get disinfectant, gauze pads, and bandages. When he came back, she wouldn't look at him. He gently took her hand in his and began disinfecting it. As someone who'd suffered the many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, he knew how painful the disinfectant was, yet she sat there without a single reaction on her face as he knew the burning sting was settling into her wound.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out, finally looking up at him. "I guess I was just thinking about my parents on the way down, and I was thinking about the injection, so seeing that needle thing freaked me out."

"Don't apologize," Tony said shortly. "I should've been thinking."

"I've never gone into survival mode on you before," she said with a weak smile on her face. Her smile was watery and pasty, as if someone had slapped it onto her mouth without really wanting it to be there. She pushed a piece of her dark hair back behind her ear, an action she rarely did because she thought it looked self-conscious.

"Hey, I'm fine, you're fine. We're ok," he said reassuringly.

"I know. We're fine," she repeated softly. "I guess seeing my mom's picture on TV the other day just got me going."

Tony applied a gauze bandage to the wound and began to wrap her hand with the bandage. Her hand was so small in his, yet he'd seen it do some pretty lethal things. He pushed the images of New York out of his head before he had his own little freak out. Not that he freaked out or anything. He just got a little stressed whenever he thought about New York, but that would pass, too. He glanced up at Grace, hesitating because he knew she wouldn't like what he had to say next.

"I know this is crazy, but…do you want to go to that banquet this weekend?" he asked. Her amber eyes burned into his in such a way that it was almost physically painful to hold eye contact with her.

"No," she said sharply.

"All right," he replied, and he didn't say anything else. He knew when to push issues with her, and he knew when to back off. Now was the time to back off. He finished wrapping her hand, and when he was done, he held it in his. Thankfully, it'd been her right hand that'd gotten bloodied up, and her left hand with the ring was undamaged and unbloodied—was that a word? If it wasn't, he'd see about making it one—much to his relief.

"I just want you to be ok," he said, knowing that he was pressing his luck by even saying that. He just couldn't help it. He expected her to lash back at him, but instead she nodded, listening to what he was saying. He sneaked looking at her, and she was staring at him, her eyes not so fiery. She looked almost quizzical, as if she were confused about why she wouldn't be ok to begin with.

"I know," she replied softly, not quite answering the question. Tony leaned forward and put his hands lightly on the back of her neck, pulling her in for a kiss. She returned the kiss, placing her hands on his wrists as he held her close to deepen the it. And she kissed him, oblivious to the fact that with every touch of his lips on hers, he imagined he was taking away the poison that was living inside her.


	4. Reminder

**Shoutouts to bluemermaidpitch, Uruvia, MicroSpider, MsRose91, and byakuya7309** **for reviewing!**

**Ugh, sorry for the hiatus, y'all! I've had really early mornings and late nights for the past several days, and I just couldn't make myself stay awake to write any chapters, but I've written y'all a long one with a nice little plot development at the end that'll spark things up finally! Please, please, please continue to leave reviews because they're so helpful for me to read. Positive, negative, as long as they're honest reviews, they help me write what y'all want to read (within reason. Like I've said before, if y'all started shipping Grace and Steve, I wouldn't be able to give y'all that, but I usually take all suggestions into consideration if they fit the storyline.)**

**Ok. Please give me feedback! I love y'all so much! Here's the chapter. Enjoy =)**

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Chapter 4

Now Grace couldn't consider herself the title-holder in the category of People Who Had Really Bad Ideas because that title _definitely _without a doubt belonged to Tony Stark, but as she walked down the halls of SHIELD Headquarters, she decided that she was probably a good runner up for the title. She was dressed in civilian clothes, wearing her typical black skinny jeans, a grey tunic shirt, and combat boots. Even out of her uniform, she could tell that the other agents recognized her as they subtly moved out of the way whenever she passed. Her mind raced with thirty thousand different thoughts as she anticipated what she was about to do; she wouldn't get in trouble for what she had in mind, no, she most definitely wasn't doing anything that could cost her her job. She just wasn't sure if she wanted to know what she thought she might need to know.

For starters, she hadn't told Tony where she was going. Truth be told, she hadn't even told Tony that she was leaving the house at all. After the small debacle that afternoon of her freaking out on him and cutting her hand, she'd retreated back to her books, studying relentlessly until the words began to swim in front of her, and she couldn't see enough to focus on them. Tony had gone back to building and designing suits as usual, and he hadn't noticed when she'd left the house. If he were acting his usual self, he would be down in the lab for hours and would never know that she'd slipped out.

If she had to admit it, yes, it bothered her that Tony wouldn't know she was gone, but on the other hand, it worked in favor for moments like today. And so there she was in the halls of SHIELD, stalking quickly towards her destination, hoping that she was blending in amongst everyone else even though she knew that she was far from being inconspicuous. Her feelings were confirmed as soon as she sensed Nick Fury's presence behind her.

"Agent Marks," he barked out. She slowed and turned around, her light eyes blank and expressionless as she faced him. Fury had almost what could pass for a genuinely pleasant smile on his face, but she knew him well enough to know that he wasn't exactly pleasant.

"Director Fury," she greeted in return. He folded his arms and cocked his head to the side as he studied her, seemingly for the first time.

"How is it that I give all of the Avengers a six month leave, but yet, I've seen you, Romanoff, Barton, and Stark around here far more than I wanted to? The only ones I haven't seen strolling around this building are Thor because he ain't even livin' on this planet, Dr. Banner because he wants to stay as far away as possible, and Captain Rogers because he's got that pretty little nurse to occupy him." Fury smirked at her, and she shrugged in response, a half-smile on her lips.

"What can I say? I can't stay away," she replied.

"Love the place too much?" Fury asked with a slight hint of amusement in his voice. Grace grinned widely and nodded.

"Actually, researching," she said with a shrug. "Personal reasons."

"Whose files are you looking at?" Fury frowned at her, his eye imperceptibly turning suspicious.

"Myself," she replied mildly.

"Agent, every time I think I have you somewhat figured out, you somehow manage to surprise me," he said, perhaps one of the most honest things he'd ever said to the dark-haired woman in front of him. Her face refused to express her surprise, but she nodded with a thin smile on her face.

"Glad to know I can still keep you on your toes," she answered.

"Well. Enjoy yourself. Tell Stark I say something nice, whatever you want to tell him. And Agent?" He paused. "Be careful."

Grace tilted her head to the side and twisted her mouth quizzically, but she slowly nodded in agreement.

"Aren't I always?" she quipped. Fury returned her smile.

"Just be careful."

Without another word, he'd flipped around and begun walking in the direction he'd come from. Grace watched him leave, wondering what he could possibly be meaning about being careful when she researched herself. Fury was always so cryptic, and he never gave answers; he was always questioning, answering questions with more questions, never quite giving away the final hint, the final clue. She had deep respect for the director, but his approach to dealing with things drove her crazy because she was such a direct person. If someone asked her a question, she answered it with an answer. She didn't try to skirt around it or answer with a question.

She finally shook his words off her shoulders and continued down the hall to her destination, trying not to let his warning creep back into her head. She had enough to worry about, enough to be apprehensive about. The last thing she needed was Fury freaking her out; she figured that one freak out a day was enough.

She reached the security door to the storage room. Holding her ID up to the scanner, she scanned in and quickly moved in and listened to the door slide shut behind her before she could change her mind and decide to leave. She looked around her at all the standard silver trunks lining the walls. Each one belonged to an agent; the trunks held that agent's personal belongings from when they first arrived at SHIELD. She'd never checked her trunk, and she figured that now was probably the time to do it. She was already having enough blasts from the past regarding her mother, so she decided that looking at her old things from when she'd arrived at SHIELD wouldn't be that much more of a big deal.

There was a touchscreen in front of her that was clearly Stark tech, and she stepped up towards it, almost feeling comforted by seeing Tony's creation in the room. In a way, it made her feel as though he were with her. She began entering in her information on the screen, knowing all the exact things she needed to put in for the tech to tell her where her things were. It was only a matter of seconds before it pulled up the location for her: Aisle E, Shelf 1, No. 93.

Nervousness flooded through her as she walked towards her new destination, scanning over the labels on all the trunks. SHIELD didn't really seem to have an organization system that she could figure out just from looking around; the trunks weren't in alphabetical order, and there seemed to be no real system as to how they were set up. SHIELD never seemed to have anything in order while having things too much in order, if that were possible.

She spotted her trunk the instant she found Aisle E, Shelf 1. The silver trunk looked just like all the others, but she could sense her belongings in them. Taking a breath and feeling very cliché while doing it, she pulled out the trunk from the shelf with great effort. They were always so much heavier than they looked. Once she had it out, she sat and stared at it. Part of her wanted to get the fuck out of there because what if she didn't like what she found? What if she freaked out again? What was she going to tell Tony? How would Tony even figure out where she was? She hadn't breathed a word to Jarvis for that very reason, and she'd left without any indication as to where she was going. She heaved a sigh, frustrated with herself, and mentally scolded herself for being a pussy. She was a SHIELD agent; she was assigned to the most dangerous cases that they had because they knew she was most competent to do the job; she was rarely ever paralyzed with fear, and that was why they chose her. And yet, there she was, not in any kind of physical danger, staring at this silver trunk as if it were a bomb.

Frustrated, she heaved another sigh and finally held her ID up to the scanner. The only people who were allowed to have access to the trunks were the owners of the trunks and a certain number of high up agents who had the clearance. The trunk accepted her ID and clicked open. She didn't pause to think about what she was doing. She just opened it.

The first thing that struck her was how much stuff was in the trunk than she'd initially remembered. From the depths of her memory, she didn't remember having anywhere near that much shit when she'd escaped from South America. However, it was all there in the trunk, and it was all definitely hers.

Her clothes caught her eye. They were ripped up, dirty ass clothes, clothes that she'd managed to survive in for years. Reaching into the trunk, she gently touched them and closed her eyes. Even now, she could see everything that happened as vividly as if it were happening to her then.

She could picture the men storming into their campsite; she could feel the pain as one man pistol-slapped her and grabbed her hair, dragging her to her feet; she could feel the gun pressed into her back as she walked; she could hear the screams of her colleagues when they realized that they were going to die; she could feel the vibrations of the gunshots against her skin.

She snapped her eyes open and moved on, rifling through the rest of the trunk. There was a backpack, and as she looked at it, she did remember having it with her when she'd run away. It was the backpack her parents had given her right before she'd gone off to college, and she'd decided to take it with her on her dig to South America. It was purple, her favorite color. Gently, she lifted it from the trunk and opened it. Everything that she'd had was still in there. She saw three paperback books that she'd taken with her on the dig; they were her very favorite books, and she'd brought them because she knew she'd never tire of reading them. _The Great Gatsby_, _A Separate Peace, _and _Never Let Me Go_. So she was a bit of a literature nerd. Always had been.

A ghost of a smile played across her lips as she looked at them. It'd been a while since she'd read any of the books, and she knew that it was because the last time she'd seen them, it'd been in South America. Tentatively, she pulled _The Great Gatsby _out and flipped through the pages, finding her favorite parts and rereading them again. It was familiar to her, giving her the feeling that she'd only last read it the week before instead of a great number of years.

Her wallet also caught her eye; it no longer had any money in it because the men who'd captured her had taken all of it. There were high school and college IDs in there, and she pulled them out. Her hair in her high school ID was short, right to her shoulders. She was smiling in the picture, and it was genuine. Her college ID looked basically the same, except her hair was longer. She replaced both of them in her wallet. There were a few letters from her friends back home, and there was a relatively small textbook on Mayan culture. It was then that she saw the bone. It was a broken femur bone that was covered in blood. She froze when she saw it, remembering the last time she'd seen it. Before she could get too drawn into the memory, she blocked it out of her mind, shoving the bone back down into the bag and quickly closing the backpack. There were also her old sneakers in there, Keds that she hadn't thought about wearing in fucking forever.

She sensed the door to the room opening, and she turned sharply over her shoulder. She stayed still, keeping her breathing as quiet as possible. Footsteps began walking towards her, and she shut the lid of the trunk silently. She began formulating her excuse for what to say if anyone she knew caught her in there and asked what she was doing. But she didn't even get that far because the person who turned the corner was the last person she thought she'd see.

"Tony," she said apprehensively, feeling strangely self-conscious to be found here in this room of SHIELD in this position on the floor holding this trunk. His brown eyes let her know that he was clearly not happy with her, but he wasn't sure whether to confront or comfort her. He was wearing jeans and a dark red button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, all topped off with his usual sneakers. His hair was crazy and sticking up all over the place, but it looked good, as if he were the only person in the world who could pull off crazy hair. He crossed his arms across his chest, blocking what little light shone through his shirt from his arc reactor. Slowly, he strolled towards her as if he didn't have a care in the world.

"Hey, what's up?" he asked casually, not a hint of anger or concern in his voice. He sounded as if he were wanting to chill and catch up with Rhodey. However, Grace could see in his eyes that he wasn't happy at all, that he was feeling the complete opposite of what his tone indicated.

"Hey, I didn't know you were done working on your suit," she said, returning his tone.

"I wasn't," he replied shortly. "Wanna pick up some fried chicken on the way home? I was thinking about fried chicken because I kind of fried my arm a little earlier, and it made me think about getting fried chicken for dinner, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all afternoon."

Grace stood up in alarm, her forehead wrinkling in concern.

"What? You fried your arm? Are you ok?" she demanded, the worry showing through her voice. Sometimes she felt more like Tony's mom than his girlfriend—now turned fiancée—and she always felt it whenever he injured himself. He glanced down at his arm, and she noticed a bandage around it, marking where he'd burned himself.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Minor incident with some hot metal, but it's ok. Popped a few pills, and it's not that bad. They were totally legal, by the way. The pills I mean." He leaned against the shelf, surveying her with his dark chocolate eyes. She knew that they were only skirting around what both of them wanted to get down to. She was quiet as she returned his gaze.

"So is that a yes? Fried chicken tonight?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fried chicken sounds good," she said cautiously. They both stood still as they stared at each other. Neither was going to give into the other without a fight, and so they began to struggle with each other. The conflict was evident in Tony's face as he struggled to keep the burdening question to himself. Grace knew that that was a challenge for him because he could so rarely keep his thoughts to himself; he was so used to just blurting out whatever at any time. Her face was clear and empty as she stared back at him, knowing it'd piss him off even more and force him to come out with it. Honestly, she didn't want to piss him off. That was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted him to just come clean instead of playing this game with her, and she was refusing to play it with him.

They still stayed quiet, Tony with his arms folded, Grace with her eyes empty. Tony sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

"Ok, I give," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Research," she replied quickly without a beat of hesitation.

"Contrary to popular belief, I'm not stupid," he montoned.

"I never said you were, Tony. And that's a stupid thing to say, anyway, because no one on Earth thinks you're stupid. Come on, you went to college at 15," she said, rolling her eyes irritably while also hoping that her tone came across as friendly. Tony smirked.

"Ok, so I'm not stupid, and you're right, no one else thinks so," he said with a shrug. "But you still haven't answered why you're here."

"I just told you. Research," she repeated.

"Hmmm. And what's so secretive that you had to leave without saying a word to me?" he asked.

"How'd you even know I was here?" she demanded, changing the subject.

"One, I know you're changing the subject. Two, I'm smart. Jarvis said you'd left, and I thought about all the places you could be where you wouldn't want to tell me you were going, and the first place I thought of was here." He blinked.

"But how'd you know I was _here_?" Grace asked, emphasizing the room.

"I had Jarvis hack the system and see where you'd last scanned in," he replied.

"Fair enough."

They stared at each other without saying anything again.

"Grace," he whispered. "I'm trying here, ok?"

She blinked at him expressionlessly. For a moment, neither of them said anything, and then she looked at the trunk.

"This is my stuff," she said without a hint of emotion in her voice. "This is everything I had when I was first brought into SHIELD. I don't know. I just wanted to look at it."

"Sentiment?" Tony asked. She shook her head blithely and pressed her lips into a hard line.

"You know I'm not sentimental about my past," she answered. "There's nothing really in this trunk that I want to keep with me. It reminds me too much of being in captivity and trying to find a way out of a situation that seemed hopeless."

He took a few steps toward her, his arms falling away.

"Look, a relationship with _me_? That's hopeless. Being held in captivity? That was _hopeful_ in the end because you got the hell out of there. You're out of there." He looked hard at her. "Grace, I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to…to…I don't know. Make things less hopeless, I guess? To be honest, I don't know what the hell to do."

"I know," she replied quietly. "Tony…you know I don't look back at my past. You know I don't."

"I do know," he answered, his tone matching hers. His brown eyes softened as he held her gaze, and she could see that he wanted to approach her. Her body ached for his touch at that moment because that was the best damn healing medicine in the world for her. Fuck the Serum. If she woke up and realized that all of her survival instincts had dulled into that of a regular human being's, and she wouldn't be able to heal as quickly, she wouldn't be worried because she'd have Tony. He healed her more than she could heal herself.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she said slowly, her voice devoid of any kind of emotion whatsoever. "Ever since I saw my mom's picture on the TV screen, I've been thinking about my life before SHIELD, and I don't know why. I'm remembering all kinds of things I don't want to. The actual injection. Seeing my friends get shot and killed. My parents." She stopped talking. She wasn't close to tears, but she just felt like she couldn't speak anymore. Her eyes locked onto Tony's, and she knew that he understood exactly what she was saying, and he didn't need to tell her that he did.

"Fried chicken makes everything better," Tony said quietly, offering her a smile. Instead of being angry at him for not saying anything to make her feel better, she smiled back because that was the kind of reaction that she'd wanted from him. He knew that she didn't want to talk too much about what was going on with her, and she loved him for knowing that. She crossed her arms over her chest and put her chin in her hand, hiding her mouth.

"It does," she agreed in a low murmur. She looked down at her left hand and then back up at him. "I took my ring off before I came here because we haven't gone public with it yet."

Tony grinned at her.

"No worries. Not offended. Speaking of, when do you want to announce it? We can do it anytime. In 15 minutes, if you give the say so. I'll give Pep a ring, and before you know it, we'll be at Stark Industries telling the world that we're getting fucking married. Huh. Damn, that does feel good to say." He took several steps closer to her. She held out her hands, and he took them in his, squeezing them gently but firmly.

"I want to announce it after I've told my mom," she said, the words rushing out before she could stop them. Tony's eyes widened with surprise that he couldn't even begin trying to hide. Of all the fucking things she could've said in the world, she came out with that one. The shock was evident as his mouth moved wordlessly with no sound coming out.

"There's no way I heard you right," he said with a frown. "What did you say?"

"I want to announce our engagement after I've told my mom," Grace repeated slowly, testing the words in her mouth.

"Are you feeling ok? Did you get blood poisoning from cutting your hand earlier? As soon as we get home, I'll have Jarvis run a sample on your blood. After we get the fried chicken, of course, because I'm starving. I swear that that cutter was clean. I know I—"

"Tony, I'm fine," she interrupted. "Sorry. I know. Interruption. My bad. But seriously. All of this shit started when I saw my mom on TV. Maybe it needs to end with her. I've got unfinished business with Dr. Sarah Marks that I think that maybe I need to take care of." She stepped closer towards him and put her hands on his chest, right over his arc reactor. He used to tense the slightest bit whenever she touched it because he was self-conscious of it, but now he seemed to relax even more when she put her hands there. It made her heart soften to know that he trusted her enough to relax whenever she touched the most vulnerable part of him.

"You know I'll support you whatever you decide to do. I read in a magazine that that's what good boyfriends are supposed to do," Tony quipped. She looked up at him and grinned.

"I don't know about good boyfriends, but I know about good _fiancés_," she corrected. "But no. I think I need to do this. I haven't seen her in almost 10 years. It's about time I touched base with my old stomping grounds, you know? Give her the surprise of her life."

She kissed him on the cheek and then extricated herself to put the trunk back where it came from. Checking to make sure that it was locked, she turned back to him and took hold of his hand. They walked out the door to their cars, giving each other a kiss and a hug before getting into their vehicles. Grace examined herself in her mirror before she pulled out of the parking lot. She'd made the decision to see her mom. She was going to tell her mom that she was getting married.

Grace was familiar with the saying, "Home is where the heart is." Her heart had never been in the house where she'd grown up; she'd known that even when she'd been growing up there. Her heart was with the man who needed an electromagnet to keep his own heart beating. Hell, she'd been waiting her entire life to find him, and she knew that deep in her soul. Now she was going to go back to the town where she'd grown up to tell the mother she hadn't spoken to for nearly 10 years that she'd finally found where her heart was. As much as Sarah Marks thought so, Grace hadn't lost her heart at 4 years old when she'd received the Serum injection. She hadn't even lost her heart in South America. She'd always had it. She'd just needed a reminder to prove that it was still there. His name was Tony Stark.


	5. Homecoming

**Shoutouts to bluemermaidpitch, MicroSpider, Duchess of Lantern Waste, MsRose91, and byakuya7309 for reviews!**

**This one is a bit of a long chapter. We have some more plot development here! Hopefully, y'all enjoy =)**

**Someone gave a request for when I'm done with this to write a Bruce/OC story. Would y'all be interested in something like that? I think it would be fun to write, but I want to gauge how much interest I'd get in it first. Please feel free to leave any opinions in the review or a PM. I always answer my PMs!**

**So yes, please, please, please, please continue to review and let me know your opinions on everything that's happening!**

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Chapter 5

"Bridesmaids…hmm…let me think. Redheaded traitor, maid of honor, obviously. You'll choose Emma and Pep." Tony took a swig of his wine and glanced at her to see if he was right. Grace swallowed her bite of KFC fried chicken and grinned back at him.

"And Steve," she said. Tony couldn't help himself; he burst out laughing hysterically.

"You're choosing Steve as a _bridesmaid_?" he asked, barely able to put a lid on it. "Oh, he's never gonna be able to live that one down. I'll make sure of it. This is perfect. Steve as a bridesmaid."

"Hey, come on. He's one of my best friends. I was thinking of calling them bridespeople, anyway." She shrugged. Tony was still howling with laughter at the thought of Steve in a fancy dress. He wiped his leaking brown eyes with the back of his hand and tried to contain his hysterical giggles.

"That's great. That's great. Perfect." He continued to snicker. Grace rolled her amber eyes up towards the ceiling. Any excuse for him to make fun of Steve.

"Best man—" she started.

"Rhodey." She and Tony finished the thought together. His laughter finally came under control as he realized that they'd said it together at the same time. How stereotypical, cliché, and adorable all at the same time, he thought. Who ever would've thought that he'd find someone who was basically on the same page as he was? And when the hell had they become that sickeningly adorable couple who finished each other's sentences? He smiled to himself, but he didn't say anything because he could see Grace thinking the same thing. For the millionth time that day, he considered how lucky he was.

"And Banner," he said. "I can have two, right? I mean, it's my wedding, I should be able to do what I want."

Grace nodded diplomatically.

"I can't see why not," she replied. If you want two best men, you should be able to have two best men." She took another bite of chicken and chewed thoughtfully. "I need someone to give me away. Normally, I would've chosen Coulson, but…" Her voice trailed off.

She and Tony were sitting on the floor in their living room leaning against the couch and eating their fried chicken off the coffee table in front of them. These were the kinds of nights that they both lived for, the nights where they could be together and relax and just talk and _exist_. Her thoughts trailed off as she thought about Coulson and how thrilled he would've been if she'd asked him to give her away. She swallowed her chicken and shrugged the thoughts away. Of course she was still sad over his loss, but there was no need sitting around and dwelling on it; that was how she'd always handled the deaths of those closest to her.

"It'd be hilarious if you asked Fury. Can you imagine him walking down the aisle to give you away?" Tony asked with a grin. Grace giggled and nodded.

"Oh, Jesus, he'd be so serious with that eye patch and everything. He'd also look pissed as hell. You know, I think I'll ask Happy to do it," she said. Tony pointed at her.

"Great idea. He'd love to do it," he replied. "He's been a big fan of you since the very first day he met you."

"Even if my dad were alive, I would've asked someone else to give me away," Grace said thoughtfully, the tiniest hint of a frown on her face.

"I know," Tony said quietly. "I still would've asked Rhodey and Banner to be my best men."

"How'd we get fucked up families?" Grace asked with a seemingly affectionate smile. He smiled back at her and winked.

"So we could have something in common. Speaking of our fucked up families, when do you wanna go tell your mom? I can arrange a flight to Connecticut whenever you want," he easily said. Grace raised her eyebrows in mild surprise.

"You remember where I'm from," she said. He rolled his chocolate brown eyes.

"Duh. I remember everything about you. You grew up in Connecticut, your favorite color is purple, you hate white socks, you can only sleep when the room is cold, and you were Nancy Drew for Halloween in third grade." He stared at her, challenging her to disagree with him.

"Wow. I'm impressed. How'd you remember all that?" she asked. He rolled his eyes again, even more dramatically.

"Because I love you. Come on, give me some credit," he replied. "And after you give me some credit, I'd love it if you give me a kiss."

Grace's heart melted into mush at how adorable he was, and she scooted closer to him to kiss him. His mouth was soft against hers, gentle but firm. When she broke the kiss, she moved her head to his shoulder, resting it there. He smelled so damn good all the time; she could tell that he'd showered before he'd come after her at SHIELD because he didn't smell like sweat and grease from having worked in the lab. He shifted his body so that his back was flat against the couch and his feet propped his knees up. Smoothly and suavely, he pulled Grace over him so that she was straddling his lap, her face even with the height of his. She tilted her head, gazing at him curiously.

"Hi," she said softly.

"Hi," he returned. "In case you didn't know, I'm very much in love with you, Gracie May."

"That's not my middle name," she replied, her eyes and face softening. He lightly scoffed.

"Whatever. It flows well. Well, anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I love you passionately, my dear." Tenderly, he pulled her into a hug. She rested against him, her arms wrapped around him, and her head tucked into the space between his neck and his shoulder. She pressed her lips there on his skin and closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of him. Through his shirt, she could feel the hard rim of his arc reactor, another friendly reminder of just how truly genius this man was. She'd never be able to get enough of him. There would be endless words to say, looks to exchange, places to touch and memorize. She would never get enough of him because there wasn't enough of him to get. It was moments like these where she wished he could crawl inside her blood and just stay there.

"Can we leave tomorrow?" she asked, her voice muffled against the skin of his neck. He shivered at the feeling of the vibrations of her voice bouncing off his skin, but he held her tighter, reveling in the warmth and softness of her body.

"Yeah, we can," he said. "I'll have Jarvis contact the airport and have them get the jet ready for tomorrow. What time do you want to arrive in Connecticut?"

"Six-thirty in the afternoon is when I want to be at my old house. Primetime."

"Then 6:30 we shall be at your old house. Nervous?"

"No."

"Scared?"

"No. Ready."

* * *

Grace blearily stepped off the last step leading out of the plane and made contact with the solid concrete of the runway. The jet's engines were still loudly going as they were still shutting down. Tony was behind her, letting her lead the way in her hometown. She squinted her light eyes and glanced around her, the sun fighting to swim in the sensitivity of her irises. It'd been a long time since she'd been in Connecticut. It'd been just as long since she'd seen her parents.

The rental car was sitting nearby, and Tony swiftly walked forward to hold the door open for her. It had been one of Grace's requests that Happy not come on this trip; he usually did because Tony liked drinking whenever he travelled, and Happy was an excellent DD, but she'd wanted the utmost secrecy, and he was going to give that to her. He opened the driver's side and got in, glancing over at Grace. Her head was resting in her hand, her elbow propped up on the side of the car door against the window. She'd been awake the entire flight and hadn't wanted to talk much. He'd tried everything in the damn book to make her responsive; he'd even gone so far as to ask her about Steve. Nothing.

The address was already programmed into the GPS system, and he began driving. Cautiously, he turned the radio on low so that if Grace wanted to say anything, he'd be able to hear her while still listening to the music and the GPS. Thankfully, the drive wasn't too far from the airport, about a twenty minute drive. He had no idea really where he was going and how he was supposed to approach all of this with Grace.

If there were any question about it, Tony didn't know how to handle emotions that well. He was pretty good at locking them up inside himself, not unlike Grace. The only difference was that he protected them by putting on his arrogant playboy act whereas Grace put on her blank face. They really weren't all that different at all, he thought to himself as he eased onto the highway. His arrogance came off as purely detached, human apathy, and her blankness came off as more of a robotic apathy.

Tony thought about how far away he was from his lab and how desperately he wished he could've brought it with him. Was he a bad person for thinking that when Grace needed him more than she ever had in her life? He was torn between feeling mildly panicky and hating himself. How could he think of himself when she was taking this huge step by talking to her mom? That was another topic where he was split; one half of him hated Sarah Marks for doing what she'd done to small, 4 year old Grace who must've been a sight with those amber eyes. Yet another half of him was fascinated by the woman who'd made all kinds of scientific advances, and he would've loved to have sat down and talked with her about her findings.

He arrived at the conclusion that he, Tony Stark, was a complete dick. Not that that was particularly news to him; he'd always known he was a dick, but for the first time in a long ass time, he felt guilty about being a dick. He really did care about Grace and what she was going through. He did. He just couldn't help thinking about how far away he was from his suits and what would happen if some disaster occurred where he'd need them on hand. What if he couldn't protect them? What if he couldn't protect Grace, and she were killed because they were so far away from his suits? He hadn't even brought a portable one. Grace would've been ok with it because she understood safety first, and her survival instincts were all about the suits. He hadn't brought one because he felt that it was far from appropriate to do so. They were there to face Grace's demons. Not his.

Time passed, and before he knew it, they were driving through a neighborhood with enormous homes. The houses weren't quite as big as his gorgeous Malibu home, but they were still impressive.

"You didn't tell me you were from money," he said out loud, more to himself than to her.

"_You _are from money. _I _am from doctors," Grace corrected. He scoffed.

"Are you ok?" he asked, changing the subject. Grace nodded, but she didn't say anything. They were close to the house, and her eyes were wide as she stared at the gate of the house that she'd once belonged to.

"The code's 8995," she said, waiting as he punched in the access code that let him into the gates. He pulled up into the circle in front of the house and let out a low whistle. It was an enormous white mansion that screamed Greek architecture and wealth. Tony certainly felt impressed as he stared at it. He tried to imagine a small Grace playing in the front yard, growing up in that house, living and breathing in that house, and he couldn't. The woman who sat next to him motionless in the passenger's side was not the same person who couldn't grown up in the mansion in front of them.

"Coming?" she asked blankly, unbuckling her seatbelt and getting out of the car before he even answered. Tony swiftly unbuckled his and got out behind her. She was already stalking up towards her old house, cutting through the grass. Tony had a feeling that when she was younger, she probably hadn't been allowed to play in the grass from the way that she so deliberately seemed to mess it up as she made her own path towards the door.

As he caught up to her, he watched her survey the door. He could tell that she was considering something, but he wasn't quite sure what exactly she was doing.

"They changed the locks," she mumbled with a frown on her face.

"You can tell that just by looking at the door?" Tony asked incredulously. She shot him a bored look. "Oh. Right. Your super special powers." He held his hands up and wiggled his fingers mystically. She rolled her eyes and redirected her attention back to the door.

"Have a credit card on you?" she asked.

"Psh. Of course," he said with a smirk. He opened his wallet and pulled out a credit card. In a flash, she'd slid the card in between the door and the doorway, and she'd unlocked the door. She stood back with a self-satisfied grin on her face before turning to look at Tony proudly.

"Go move the car somewhere else. She doesn't need to know we're here," she said easily.

"Are we breaking and entering your mom's house?" he asked with a frown. She nodded excitedly, looking pleased with herself.

"Oh, great! I'll be back in a jiffy. Don't do too much snooping without me," he said, lighting up and hurrying back to the car to move it.

"Remember, the code's 8995!" she called to him. He replied with a thumbs up and went to go park somewhere. She lingered in the doorway to watch him drive off. Slowly, she turned back to face the inside of her childhood home. Not much had changed. It was still the same enormous house, and it was still quiet and empty. Much to her delight, she noticed that her mom still didn't put on the alarm whenever she left. Typical Sarah Marks. Never believing that anything could hurt them, never acknowledging that there was more danger than she chose to believe.

Grace walked around the quietness of her home. Physically, it wasn't empty. Sentimentally, it had nothing to show for itself. There weren't any pictures on the walls of Sarah, Andrew, or Grace, though she wasn't surprised to not see any pictures of herself. Her parents had never been the type to show off their daughter, no matter what her accomplishments had been, and she'd had plenty of them when she was growing up.

Carefully, she wandered the halls, looking at everything. There were a few changes such as different curtains, different flowers in the pots, and the cabinets of the kitchen had been replaced. But otherwise, it was virtually the same. As she walked along, she sensed Tony walking up to the front of the house and entering, closing the door behind him.

"Grace?" he called out.

"In here!" she called back, turning around and looking around the kitchen. Tony walked in, taking in the sights of all the unfamiliar things around him. His expression was curious and interested in everything. She smiled as she saw him; he was like a small kid, overly excited by everything at all times.

"So this is your old shack, huh?" he asked, crossing over to her, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt with a grey pin-striped blazer over it. She nodded and held her hand out to him. He eagerly took it and held it, swinging it back and forth while he looked around.

"Your parents are minimalists, I take it," he said, squinting and examining the walls. There was an occasional wall decoration, but for the most part, it was empty.

"Understatement of the century," Grace murmured in response.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait."

* * *

Half an hour passed, and in that time, Grace got herself and Tony a glass of wine and a pack of crackers. Yep, Sarah still kept everything in the same place. Grace smiled to herself as she realized that she'd been right when she'd realized that few things ever changed. Tony went to the use the bathroom—she directed him to the nearest bathroom down the hall—and that was when she sensed it.

She could sense her mom driving up just as strongly as she'd been able to years ago. The force of it made her close her eyes shut and squeeze them tightly. This was the moment of truth. Her heart began climbing its way up her throat, begging for release, but she forced it to stay down. Or maybe that was actual vomit working its way up her esophagus. Either way she couldn't metaphorically vomit up her heart or physically throw up her stomach's contents. She sat tall and waited for Sarah to come in.

The front door opened, and she heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall to the kitchen. Grace had been right; after nearly 10 years, Sarah still came to the kitchen first to get a cup of tea going so she could spend the rest of the evening resting before she decided what would come next for dinner. Grace sat still, unmoving and silent, her face wearing its typically expressionless mask.

Dr. Sarah Marks walked around the corner, her head downwards facing her cell phone as she checked something on it. As she walked into the kitchen, she absently looked up, and she saw Grace. Her brown eyes widened, and she jumped slightly when she saw the amber-eyed assassin sitting calmly and casually at her island in the middle of the kitchen. For a moment, no one said anything. Sarah and Grace stared at each other, neither sure what to do.

"It's been a long time since I've seen that face," Sarah said finally, her voice even and steady. "In fact, you've improved it. I used to be able to at least give a guess as to what you're thinking. Looking at you now, I have no idea what's going on in your head."

Grace didn't say anything. Sarah carefully took a few steps forward into the kitchen, standing tall, not seeming to waver for a second. She put her phone back in her purse and turned her attention back to Grace. As Grace stared at her mother, she saw that if the house hadn't changed, her mom sure had. Sarah's hair was shorter, more neatly cut. She wore a black pencil skirt and a sky blue button down shirt with a black blazer over it, all topped off with a pair of black heels. When Grace was younger, Sarah had rarely worn clothes like that; she'd usually dressed in clothes that would be ok if they'd gotten messed up in the lab, even though Sarah had always worn a lab coat over them. She was cleaned up and polished, nothing like the busy absent-minded mom that Grace remembered. It was so hard to breathe, Grace thought to herself, as the weight of this house weighed in on her.

"Your father and I used to call it the Grace Face. No one else could quite pull a deadpan like you could." Sarah continued to take a few steps more into the kitchen, testing where it was ok to stand and where it wasn't. Grace gave no reaction, continuing to stare silently at her mom. A ringing sounded off loud in her ears, but she wouldn't allow it to show on her face. Her heart was strangely quiet, silent even, and she wondered if it were even beating at all.

Sarah's face was calm, but it was clear that she wasn't sure what to exactly make of Grace. Her eyes scanned over Grace's face, quickly taking in every single detail, every shape of her.

"How'd you get in? I had the locks changed," Sarah said, setting her purse down on the island and folding her arms across her chest.

"I'm a SHIELD agent. I can get in anywhere. Besides, your security system is as advanced as a caveman's spear," Grace quipped, the joke seeming to take Sarah by surprise.

"She speaks," Sarah said. She opened her mouth to say more, but she was cut off.

"Goddamn, those are some soft fucking towels. Were they always that soft? Where does your mom even get towels like that? That shit's gotta be black market, I'm not even—" Tony walked into the kitchen and stopped talking when he saw Sarah standing there. Sarah turned to face him, her brown eyes looking him over, and she smiled at him.

"Tony Stark. So you're the guy who's taken up so much of my daughter's time over the past two and a half years," she said cheerfully.

"Uh, yeah. Something like that. You're the doctor who took up 18 years of Grace's life, right?" Tony stuck his hand out nonchalantly, a smirk on his face. Sarah took his hand and shook it firmly, not breaking eye contact. Tony could see where Grace's boldness came from because Sarah didn't once flinch as she shook hands with the billionaire. He withdrew his hand and crossed to Grace, continuing to stare at Sarah. He longed to step in between Grace and Sarah and protect her from this woman who had hurt her, but he did no such thing; he didn't even reach out and touch Grace because he knew that wasn't what she needed at this time. For the first time in his life, he willingly stayed silent.

"Well, Grace, I haven't seen you in eight years, and now here you are," Sarah said, her brown eyes flicking back over to Grace. Grace gave her mother a wry smile, but the look in her eyes didn't change, still refusing to give any kind of thought or emotion away.

"You know how many years it's been," she said coolly.

"I guess it's not news to you to tell you that your father died a year and a half ago," Sarah said.

"Yes, I was aware of it when it happened. Steve told me," Grace answered tonelessly.

"Ah, yes, your teammate," Sarah said. "Even though you don't look it, I know you're surprised. Yes, I've been keeping up with you since your time in South America. I used to do lots of work with SHIELD, and I still have inside contacts who keep me up to date on you. Besides, it's easy to keep up with you when you're dating the world's richest man. I've seen every single one of your interviews, and I have every single magazine you've appeared in. Good job saving the world a few months back."

"Am I supposed to give you a gold star?" Grace asked. Sarah's eyebrows shot up into her hairline. She glanced lingeringly at Grace, and then she crossed to the fridge, opening it up and pulling out a bottle of water. Unscrewing the cap, she took a few swallows of it and leaned against the closed door of the fridge, continuing to stare at her amber-eyed daughter.

"You're still so detached," she murmured.

"You told me to come back from South America with stories. Well, I have plenty of stories, Mom. For starters, I was shot in the head. Survived it. You and Dad would've been proud of yourselves. The Serum and everything. Saved me, I guess." Grace blinked in the direction of Sarah. She could sense Tony standing next to her, the anticipation hyping up in his muscles, ready to strike, to do anything. The tension was almost unbearable; it was so heavy that it was weighing down on her lungs.

"Grace," Sarah said quietly, a low tone that was meant to be a warning. Grace coolly examined her mom, not batting an eyelash, not giving any semblance of emotion away.

"I didn't come to talk, Mom. I only came to tell you that Tony and I are getting married," she said emotionlessly. Then, without another any warning, she stood up, grabbed Tony's hand firmly in hers, and looked up at him. "Come on. I'm done here."

Tony followed the assassin out of the room, staring heatedly at the polished, put together woman who stood with her mouth slightly parted as she watched them leave. The fire in his chest was so hot that he couldn't stand it. He wanted to grab Grace and shield her from everything in this house. And yet he was proud of her. He was so proud of her. She'd handled herself perfectly, and he was so fucking proud.

He followed her out of the house and out the gate. Pulling her gently, he walked over to where he'd parked the car on the side of the street in such a way that it wouldn't look like it was in front of Grace's old house. He looked at her and saw her eyes flashing as she stared straight ahead, seeing only the car and nothing else.

"Hey," he said quietly, tugging on her hand. Her head shot up, and she looked up at him, looking almost startled to see him there. He didn't say anything, and he didn't need to. She grabbed him in a tight, hard hug, burying her face into him. He hugged her back tightly, letting her hold him against her heart.

The pain coursed through her blood faster and more intensely than she'd imagined it would, and she could see stars, but she closed her eyes tightly and held onto Tony. Air filled her lungs as she desperately fought to bring air into her heaving chest. She breathed in his smell, allowing it to purify her blood, to chase out the poison she was holding there. Her house was full of poison, and she'd forgotten how lethal it had been when she'd lived there. The smell that could only be associated with Tony Stark made her pure again, wiping out every damn toxin in her system.

She wanted to drown in him. She would let him take her to wherever they were staying that night, and she would taste every inch of his skin, and she would allow him to take her skin off strip by strip until she was bare and vulnerable in front of his eyes. She gripped him to her, his muscles hard, and she squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that she saw a mixture of colors behind her eyelids.

"Let's go," she said softly. He pulled back and kissed her roughly, gazing into her eyes after his lips left hers, the burn of them still searing across her mouth.

"Ok," he said, and he opened the car door for her. She got in and waited for him to get in and drive. He started the car and began driving off with no direction in mind. He reached over and grabbed her hand. She wanted to drown in him, but she wanted him to pull her back out and breathe into her flat lungs an oxygen that only he could provide.


	6. Challenge

**Shoutouts to Duchess of Lantern Waste, bluemermaidpitch, la misteriosa volpe, byakuya7309, MsRose91, and akt15!**

**Yay, I'm so glad that y'all have liked the chapter where Grace and her mother finally meet face to face! It was short, but I didn't want it to be this huge melodramatic blow out between the two of them. If you've kept up with Grace's character development since Survival Skills, you know that huge melodramatic blow outs are not really her style :P I was hoping that you guys would find it as effective as I thought it was, so I love all the positive feedback on it!**

**Don't worry, though, this chapter isn't the last that we've seen of Sarah Marks. Oh no =)**

**So far I've also received lots of positive feedback on a Bruce/OC story, so yay! I'm really excited about that. I'm going to try to wrap this story up by 10 chapters, so there'll still be plenty of time to fit in a decent length Bruce/OC story by the time Iron Man 3 comes out.**

**IMPORTANT WARNING: I head back to school on Sunday. My updates probably won't be as frequent during the school year as they are in the summer, but I will try my damnedest to update as frequently as possible. I mean, I should be able to do every few days instead of every single day like I usually do. I just wanted to give a heads up!**

**So here's this chapter. Lots of plot development involving Grace's time in South America. Not for the faint of heart, my friends. Please, please, please continue leaving your thoughts on the chapters because I love reading them!**

* * *

Chapter 6

Sarah quietly made her tea, and then she quietly went and sat on the bed in her bedroom to quietly be alone with her thoughts. She almost couldn't believe that what had just happened had actually happened. Only five minutes ago, Grace had been sitting in her kitchen. Grace had been there. Grace with her peculiar eyes that always stared and never showed anything. Grace with her impassive face. Grace with the Serum coursing through her veins, still alive, still Grace.

Sarah calmly took a sip of the hot tea, holding the mug in her hands so it warmed her. Grace's amber stare had always chilled her, ever since the little girl had been born. That was why she'd gotten in the habit of drinking tea every day, to warm herself up from the cold feelings that those eyes gave her. She closed her eyes and pictured Grace when she was little before she'd been injected with the Serum. She pictured Grace playing in the backyard with dolls, always cautious. Before she'd received the Serum, she'd always been careful, always watchful of everything around, always suspicious. Before the Serum, she'd been less suspicious of Sarah and Andrew, allowing them to pick her up and carry her whenever they needed to. After the Serum, though, she'd withdrawn so far within herself that Sarah knew they could never bring out again.

She didn't regret anything she'd done. She might've emotionally lost her daughter, but she'd physically saved her. She took a deep breath and another swallow of her tea. Seeing Grace had unnerved her to the roots of her very existence. She couldn't shake the sight of seeing her daughter so stoic and solemn at her kitchen island with Tony Stark. Tony Stark, of all people. Sarah shouldn't have been surprised; she'd been reading the magazines for years, and ever since Grace and Tony had moved in together, she'd read rumors of marriage. Now it was actually happening. Her little girl was getting married to a man who was every ounce as dangerous as Grace herself was.

Amusing herself, she wondered what Andrew would've thought of seeing Grace again. How would he have reacted? He would've wanted to know what had happened to her, what she remembered from South America and all her other missions. Andrew would've asked what Steve Rogers was like, and he would've grilled the girl about the Super Solider. He'd always been far more detached from Grace than she had been; how could she be totally detached? She was Grace's mother. She knew that she hadn't been a great one. She wasn't so out of touch with herself that she could deny it, but she hadn't turned a blind eye to Grace. She'd made sure that Grace was comfortable and taken care of, and that was all she could do for her because she didn't know how to tell such a small, suspicious, untrusting little girl that she was loved and safe.

Sarah was proud of Grace. She'd never tell her that. In fact, she didn't think she'd be able to tell Grace even if she tried. But she knew it. She felt it deep down that she was proud of the young woman that Grace was. In all honesty, it hadn't surprised her at all that Grace had joined up with SHIELD. SHIELD was embedded in the assassin's blood, and it had only been natural for her to shift that way. Sarah had had a part in that, though. She'd alerted SHIELD of Grace's existence and told them about her daughter's abilities.

SHIELD had then taken matters into their own hands. They'd staked agents around the site, waiting for Grace to break out, and one day Grace did. And when Grace had escaped, she'd found herself being taken into SHIELD where she was trained to become one of them. Sarah didn't regret her part in Grace's role in becoming a SHIELD agent, either. You could deny a lot of things, but you could never deny what you were meant to do, and that was what Grace was meant to do.

Sarah stared into her cup of tea. Her little girl was getting married, and she wouldn't be there to see it happen. The silence and isolation of the house was enough to suffocate her.

* * *

"Well, that went well, I think," Grace said, relatively cheerfully as she stared out the windshield. Concerned, Tony shot a glance over to her. She looked more relaxed than he'd seen her in a long time. Not a single worry line marred her lovely face, and she looked as though she were enjoying herself.

"Are you ok?" he asked, trying to keep the worry out of his tone. She was quiet, squinting her eyes as she considered his question. Finally, she looked over at him, her perfect mouth in a small smile.

"I'm better than I thought I would be," she said slowly, as if the thoughts were still flying around her head, and she couldn't lasso them down to speak them. Tony didn't reply, leaving her to her own mind. A strange calm had settled into her brain, and she couldn't focus clearly through the fog of the calm. She'd just seen her mother. She'd just been in her childhood house. Her father was dead. Was this what peace was like? Or was this just the calm before the storm? She couldn't tell.

Tony was still holding her hand, his thumb stroking over the sensitive skin near her wrist. Her nerves were alight, that much she knew for sure. The only thing that was really keeping her connected to the physical world around her was Tony's thumb as it gently moved back and forth, back and forth across her skin. She looked down at his hand. Calluses were all over his hands, and she loved them. She loved every callus because it showed the dedication he had to his work. He worked relentlessly, and yes, it did mean that he wasn't always around whenever he was in the heat of working on his suits, but she was ok with that. He was there when it mattered. Hell, he'd flown with her all the way across the country so she could talk to her mom.

"We can announce the engagement publicly now," she said. The words felt like boulders in her mouth, refusing to move so that she could speak clearly. Looking out the window so Tony couldn't see her face, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against her head.

"When do you wanna do it? I'll call Pepper and tell her," Tony said.

"Is tomorrow ok? We might as well get it over with," Grace replied, massaging her forehead with her free hand.

"Are you ok?" Tony asked again, this time failing to keep the concern out of his voice.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah. My head just hurts," she said.

"We can go back to the hotel if you want, order something in."

"Can we have pizza?"

Tony let out a joyous laugh and squeezed her hand.

"If I didn't know it before, I definitely know now that you're the one."

* * *

Grace still felt strange the rest of the evening, but her brain regained its sharpness as time went on. She and Tony lay on the bed in their suite that they were staying in for the night as she finished off her last piece of pizza. Tony would probably eat another slice or two; his appetite seemed to have no end. Actually, now that she thought about it, correction: _Thor's _appetite seemed to have no end. The dude probably could've eaten an elephant just as a meal.

The mood was relatively light between the two of them. Her spirits were lifting, and she did feel strangely freer after having faced Sarah. It was still so strange to think about everything that had happened to her. She'd had the injection in the enormous basement that served as her parents' lab in that house. So many memories were filled in that place.

She glanced over at Tony. Ironically, as she'd been leveling out throughout the duration of the evening, he seemed to get more wired up. Every so often, he would get up and start pacing while chewing on a piece of pizza. Sometimes he'd pull out a pen and scribble something down in one of his notebooks he'd brought with him. It didn't take a genius to know that Tony was feeling antsy because he was away from his lab, and it broke Grace's heart to see the anxiety pressing into him as each second passed.

"You ok, Tony?" she asked. He didn't seem to hear her. His brown eyes were focused somewhere off in the distance, and she could see thoughts and ideas flooding his brain faster than he could write them down. His face was totally still as he tried to find a way to get all of them out without losing pace.

"Hey. Tony," Grace said a little louder. He was writing in his notebook then, completely oblivious to the fact that she was there. Sighing, she leaned back into the pillows and waited for him to stop. Eventually, his hand began to slow, and he was coming back down to Earth for whatever precious moments he'd have.

"Tony," she said. His head snapped towards her in surprise, as if he'd forgotten that she was even there. "Are you ok?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Just have a lot of ideas that I'm...thinking about is all," he said, playing it cool.

"Come on. We're on vacation," Grace said with a grin, trying to entice him to leave his work. He smiled back at her and looked longingly towards his notebook and then at her, looking like he was having trouble making up his mind. She ignored the pang of hurt in her chest as she realized that he was genuinely having trouble deciding whether to come join her or to keep working on his ideas. She also ignored the realization that had this been a year ago, the decision would've been no contest. Hell, he wouldn't have even had to make a decision because he would already be in bed with her, enjoying his time alone in a new place.

As much as it killed her to admit it, she had a feeling that if he hadn't proposed to her, they wouldn't have had sex that night, and here they would be pressing two weeks without sex, a fact that was simply unheard of when it came to Tony Stark. He was so busy in his lab, and she was so busy with her research…whenever either of them decided to sleep, they were too exhausted to leave their marks on each other in lines of sweat and desire.

"Hmmm, this has been a hell of a vacation," he murmured. She gave him half a smile and a small shrug.

"Win some, lose some."

"Are _you_ ok?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I guess I'm just kind of in shock right now, you know? I saw my mom for the first time in eight years, and it's…it's a lot."

Tony finally got up and moved towards the bed, looking unsure as he did so. His eyes wouldn't meet hers, and that was when she knew that he was doing it only because he thought she wanted him to. And she was too selfish to turn him away, so when he got in the bed beside her and draped an arm around his shoulders, she let the weight of his anxiety press down on her heart and her conscience.

"You know, whenever I really think about it, like, _really _try to remember, I don't remember very much about being in captivity," she said slowly. What she was doing was offering a piece of her to him in hopes that he would be distracted from his work and want to be with her, and she hated herself for doing it.

"Grace, you don't have—"

"I know," she interrupted. "I just…I was just thinking. I remember flashes here and there. I remember always feeling terrified and panicky. It was constant, that feeling. That's the one continuous thing I remember. Otherwise, it's snippets. They kept me in the same hut with the dead bodies of my colleagues and my professor. The smell got so bad that I dug their graves myself."

A chill went down Tony's spine as he clearly saw in his mind's eye a smaller, younger 18 year old Grace, fresh out of high school, frantically digging graves, pushing bodies in and covering them with dirt. It was a morbidly ironic thought: the girl whose special skills that were designed to keep her from death burying those who had met it.

"They tried to kill me when they killed the others who were on the dig with me, and that was when I was shot in the head. When I woke up two weeks later, basically fully healed, they thought I was a demon, and they didn't know what to do with me. So they tried to starve me to death. Didn't work either. They then realized that they couldn't kill me, but they knew I could feel fear, and they held that over me until the day I escaped." She didn't look at him, looking down at her hands. Tony was accustomed to hearing her expressionless voice talk about horrific events, but he'd never heard anything quite like this, and it was unnerving. Her voice was flat and even, steady and strong as she spoke. He wanted her to stop, but his mouth was so dry he couldn't get himself to speak.

"I escaped because I killed my captors with a femur bone from one of my friends," she said quietly. "I remember that most of all, and that's the thing I wish most I could forget."

"Grace," he said softly. She turned to face him but didn't look at him, her eyes still down low. He'd always known that she had a dark side; one time he'd jokingly called her his Shady Lady because she had that dark, solemn side, but he never could've guessed that it'd spawned from the information she'd just told him. He couldn't decide whether he thought it tragic or terrifying what had happened to her and what she'd been capable of doing when she was in her survival mode.

He then did for her what she had done for him when he'd told her about Afghanistan. He opened his arms, and she moved closer to lie down and place her head in his lap, where he stroked her soft hair.

"I'm tired of it always being so serious between us," she said suddenly. "I miss laughing with you, joking, having fun. We should be acting like we're in love, not like it's a burden to spend time with each other."

"What are you talking about? Grace, the time that we spend together isn't a burden for me. I've just been really busy with the suits. Things will slow down, and we'll be able to go back to—"

"When? You said that a month ago, and then you said it a month before that. We're still in the same place. You work, I study, and we don't touch, and we barely talk, and when we _do_ talk, we're avoiding the one thing that's threatening to come crashing in on us," she said. Tony closed his eyes but continued to let his hand stroke over her hair the way he knew she loved it. She was right. She was always right.

"Soon," he said quietly. "You don't think we have fun together anymore?"

"Rarely," Grace said, her voice so soft that it was almost a whisper.

"What do you say tomorrow after we announce our engagement, we go to a soccer game?" Tony asked. Grace looked up at him, her amber eyes wide.

"Really? That'd be fun," she said, a spark creeping into her eyes. He smiled down at her.

"Yeah. Like that?"

She sat up and put her forehead against his. As he stared at her, he smiled at the amber Cyclops in front of him, and she nodded back at him.

"I'd love that. Hey, I'm tired. Do you want to go to sleep now?" She looked at him so expectantly that Tony couldn't say no. Instead, he nodded, and within 15 minutes, both he and Grace were dressed in comfortable clothes, TV off, light out, and tucked into each other. As convinced as Tony had been that he wouldn't be able to fall asleep, he blissfully fell into a world of blackness and unconsciousness. Unlike his engagement night, however, he had dreams. He dreamt of a half-starved, bone-thin girl with strange eyes as she wandered through the jungle. He dreamt of a snapped off bone being used as a weapon. He dreamt of Sarah Marks watching Grace walk out of her house. He dreamt of Grace and the curves of her body that molded just perfectly against him. He dreamt of Grace.

* * *

"Hey, Pep, it's me," Tony droned into the phone. He looked out the window and saw the clouds beneath him as the jet sliced through the sky back to California. Grace was sitting across from him with her eyes closed, headphones over her ears as she dozed. In the course of the past 24 hours, he'd felt the guilt pressing down on him from all angles as he'd seen her studying him. He knew he was so detached these days, and he knew she was disappointed that he was so jumpy about his suits, but she still kept it to herself. He looked away from her, unable to keep looking at her.

"There you are! I've been trying to get a hold of you for two days now!" Pepper exclaimed, a hint of irritation edging into her clipped, professional voice. He allowed himself to smile; whenever he talked to Pepper, it was like things were in the old days again, back when things were simple. No gods, no aliens, no SHIELD.

"Uh, yeah, had to jet off for a bit. I need a press release arranged for this afternoon," he said.

"For?" Pepper asked.

"Oh, nothing too big. Just announcing my engagement," Tony said nonchalantly. He grinned even wider when he heard his former personal assistant's very audible gasp as she processed his words.

"Tony! How was it? Did she like the ring? What'd you do?"

"Long story, but she said yes, and we're getting married."

"Oh, Tony, I'm so happy for you. For the both of you, really. Grace has been a heaven send for you. I know I say it a lot, but I've had a good feeling about her since the very first day I met her. There are just some people that you know are going to make changes, and she was one of them," Pepper said excitedly.

"Ok, thanks for the input, Buddha Potts," Tony replied with a smirk.

"Tony! I'm being serious!" Pepper scolded.

"I know, I know. Anyway, I need a press release to announce it. The Soon-to-Be-Mrs. gave her approval, and we want to, you know, let the world rejoice or whatever it is they do whenever people get married."

"You'll be breaking the hearts of young, single women all over the world, Mr. Stark," Pepper quipped.

"Please, they'll find it more attractive that I'm even more of a challenge to come by. Miss Potts, do enlighten me: do women find it more attractive to pursue something even though there is zero chance that they'll ever be able to achieve it?"

"I wouldn't know, Mr. Stark. I aim my sights on things I can achieve."

"Touche, Miss Potts, touche. You'll call me when you get a solid time on that press release?"

"Right away. Will that be all, Mr. Stark?"

"That will be all, Miss Potts." He hung up the phone and found himself feeling more desolate and alone than he had in a long time. Tony Stark wasn't one who believed in nostalgia, just like Grace. Neither of them looked back with sentiment on their pasts because they believed that the only things they could control were what happened to them in the future. And yet Tony leaned back in his seat wishing that he could go back to a year ago when he didn't have to worry about the Avengers, aliens, and wormholes. All he'd thought about last year had been Grace, the company, and making an occasional suit if the idea were that good.

He reached out with his foot and nudged his snoozing fiancée; without a jolt of surprise—she was never surprised by anything because she could always fucking sense it—she opened her eyes and sleepily looked at him while removing her headphones.

"Hmm?" she asked, her voice dripping with sleep.

"Just called Pepper, and she's setting up the press release right now as we speak," he said. She smiled, a dazzling smile that blew him to bits and made him feel like sunshine itself coursed through his veins. She looked so damn adorable and not fully there that it was terribly endearing.

"We're engaged," she mumbled out loud.

"Yep. We're engaged," he agreed with a joyful wink. "Oo, this is a good excuse to throw a party."

"Let it be nothing like it was all those years ago," she replied disdainfully as a yawn slipped out.

"Please, give me some credit, Princess. I am a changed man. I met a lovely little SHIELD monkey who made this bad boy into a good boy."

She grinned at him from across the aisle.

"Nah. You're a still a bad boy. You're just _my _bad boy." Without another word, she slipped her headphones back on and drifted off to sleep again. She always could've gone back to the bedroom that was on the private jet, but he knew she wanted to be out there with him. As he watched her fall asleep, he thought about everything that had happened yesterday. For a moment, it didn't even seem to be real. He'd met the woman that Grace had been so tight-lipped about, and she'd told him some unimaginably gruesome details from her time in captivity. Yet despite everything she'd told him, what bothered him the most wasn't the fact that she'd killed her captors with a femur bone from a dead friend: it was the fact that she'd said they didn't have fun anymore.

He noticed that a piece of her hair was hanging in her face, and he smiled. They could still have fun. First, they would announce their engagement to the world, and then they would go to a soccer game and have fun. There was still plenty of fun to be had left between the two of them, and he was ready to show her. He grinned as he thought about all the negative things people had said about him over the years; the one thing they'd never said about him was that he didn't have fun.

He might have been engaged to Agent Grace Marks, but he was doing a pretty bad job at courting her, and he decided that maybe that was just what he needed to do in order to keep her around and to keep his mind off the suits. He could do that for a little while, surely. The suits could wait. She was so stressed out about her mom that she needed something to distract her, and he was more than ready to accept the challenge.


	7. Warning

**Wooo shoutouts to bluemermaidpitch, la misteriosa vulpa, hockeygurl39, MicroSpider, MsRose91, and byakuya7309 for reviewing!**

**Sorry I didn't post last night! I've been so busy trying to organize everything for college, and it's exhausting! Anyway, here's a nice chapter for y'all. It's not as long as the chapters usually are, but it's got a lot of action packed in it. Some nice Trace fluff, too, because I felt like things were getting a little too angsty between the two of them. Bless their hearts, they need to have some fun, too! However, there is a shit ton of serious in this chapter but not quite the same as what y'all are thinking ;)**

**Let me know your thoughts on this chapter! Keep the reviews coming because they are your voice, your opportunity to say what you need and want to say about what you like and don't like! =)**

* * *

Chapter 7

Tony dropped onto the couch with a great sigh. Early mornings didn't agree with him, and his muscles were tight from having sat on a plane for several hours in the early morning light so they'd get back to California with plenty of time to rest before the press release. Pepper had called back with a time for the announcement: 2:30. Tony glanced at his phone and saw that it was 10 in the morning. He let out a groan and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Grace's easy laugh filled his ears, and he felt the cushions indent as she plopped down next to him, resting her legs across his lap and leaning back into the pillows. Without thinking about it, he reached out and put his hands on top of her legs, again admiring how well built she was. Ah, yes, he was a leg man.

Quickly, he moved so that he was on top of her, the length of his body stretching out against hers. He propped himself up on his elbows so that he wouldn't crush her with his weight. She opened her amber eyes at the warmth of him and smiled at him, a soft glow making her eyes look less harsh.

"The element of surprise," Tony said with a smirk.

"You didn't surprise me. I definitely sensed what you were about to do before you did it," she replied. He rolled his dark chocolate eyes at her. She was always ruining his mojo like that, but whatever. He continued trying to surprise her, and she continued loving him all the more for wanting to.

"Whatever. Just let me think I surprised you," he said. Suddenly, her eyes widened, and she sharply exhaled in a shocked gasp.

"Oh no! I'm so surprised! I was not expecting that at all!" she quietly exclaimed with a grin. Tony narrowed his eyes at her and pretended to assess her ability to act surprised.

"I picked up on some unauthentic emotion in there, but lucky for you, you're not going into the acting business, and I'm going to let your bad acting slide," he replied.

"What? My acting isn't bad! Please, I've been acting as a normal girl for the past two and a half years."

"Normal? _Normal_? Grace, you told Barbara Walters that you read Dostoyevski's _Crime and Punishment _for fun. No one reads Russian novels for fun."

"It's a good book!" she protested.

"You say that about _every _book," he retorted.

"I didn't say that about _50 Shades of Grey_," she answered with a smug grin. Tony's eyes widened in shock.

"Hey, I liked that book!" he exclaimed. Grace snickered beneath him and wiggled her arms out so she could wrap them around his neck. Things felt normal with them again, and she wanted to keep it that way. He was paying attention to her, not his suits. He wanted to be here with _her_. She also didn't feel like burying her nose in a book; in a way, her brain felt as though it were crammed with too much stuff, and she needed to let everything she'd learned and experienced in the last few days absorb.

"You only liked it because it had lots of sex in it," she murmured, her mouth millimeters away from his own. He gave her a wicked wink, also terribly distracted by her lovely mouth being so close to his own…

"I don't want to _try _that kind of sex, but it sure was fun reading it," he murmured back. Her eyes were bright as she gazed at him, and he swallowed hard when he watched them flick down to his mouth. And he kissed her. Her mouth was gentle and soft, but it was clear what it was asking for. She tightened her arms around his neck a slight bit and deepened the kiss, her tongue sliding against his lips. _Well, two can play the tongue game_, Tony thought to himself. Eagerly, she granted him access, and his tongue was entwined with hers.

For the first time in a long time, he was enjoying kissing her, just kissing her. Nothing more, nothing less. The heat of her emotion was enough to dazzle him, and he could only return it. There wasn't much else in the world that he would rather be doing than lying here with the woman he was goddamn in love with as he kissed her and forgot about everything else, even his suits. The musky scent of sweaty content grew as they continued kissing. Softly, Grace giggled.

"Mmm?" he asked, his lips still pressed to hers. She stopped and opened her eyes, looking at him with a playful glint in them.

"It's like high school all over again. Making out like a bunch of teenagers," she said. He smiled back at her and winked.

"Oh, honey, I wasn't making out in high school."

She let out a mock annoyed groan but laughed anyway.

"Well, I was. With Alex Lewis, Michael Sherman, Seth Waters, Ben Ayckbourn, Jason Mc—"

"Ok, ok, ok, enough. Shut up and kiss me. I'm liking this whole making out thing." He kissed her again before she could say anything, and her giggle swelled in his mouth as he swallowed her down.

* * *

A good ten minutes later, Tony had a raging erection and perfectly mussed hair as Grace delved her tongue deep into his mouth for one last kiss. She then planted a small kiss on his nose.

"I really do have to go run errands before this press release," she mumbled. "Do you wanna see if Rhodey and Pepper wanna come have dinner with us tomorrow? I'll cook."

Tony let out a groan as he sat up, ignoring his painfully hard boner and running a hand through his hair, messing it up even more. She maneuvered out from beneath him so that she sat calmly on the couch, easily gazing at him with swollen lips and starry eyes so bright that they could light up all of California if the stars in the sky ever went out.

"Sure, yeah, invite Rhodey and Pep over. We'll drink, laugh, be merry, smoke some dope. Good times," he groaned, begging his penis to deflate. Grace snickered from her side of the couch and stood up, reaching out to touch his face and give him a lingering kiss on his temple.

"I'll let you cool down now. I'll be back soon. Love you."

"Love you."

He sat on the couch and listened to Grace grab the keys to her Toyota Camry—which she refused to turn in for one of his better, fancier cars, but whatever, if she wanted to die in a Camry instead of a Lexus, that was her problem—before he heard the front door open and shut. Sighing, he imagined that he was at the ballet watching a male ballerina leap across the stage in white tights. That usually did the trick. He sat there slowly regulating his breathing and focusing on that damn man ballerina in those damn white tights that he almost didn't hear the doorbell ring. It was as if he heard it in the back of his mind but didn't fully register it.

"Sir, the doorbell rang," Jarvis announced. Tony frowned and glanced over his shoulder towards the door.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"A woman, sir," Jarvis answered. Wincing, Tony stood up and took a few steps to the door before stopping and readjusting his pants so that any lingering remains of a high school-esque boner would be gone. Irritation flashed through his face as he wondered who the hell could be at the door. People rarely came to his house without calling him first, and if it was another damn girl scout, he'd flip a shit. Grace loved the girl scouts, and he just kind of tolerated them, but he did it all for the cookies because those were damn good motherfucking cookies.

Placing his hand on the door, he ran a hand through his hair to make it look seemingly presentable and took the plunge, twisting the knob and opening the door. When he saw who had rung the bell, he stood still in his tracks, eyes wide as he took in the sight of the woman in the doorway.

"Hello, Mr. Stark," Sarah Marks said coolly. He frowned, vaguely aware of the fact that he'd been gaping at the woman, and leaned against the doorframe.

"Dr. Marks," he said cautiously. She wasn't quite as formally dressed as she had been yesterday, wearing black pants and a button down blouse with a light green blazer over it. Her face was apprehensive but confident at the same time, and her brown eyes were watchful, clearly studying him as he took in the sight of her.

"May I come in? I know Grace is gone. I saw her leave," Sarah said, at least having the decency to sound apologetic. Tony stared at her. He didn't nod, but he opened the door wider and stepped back, allowing her entrance into his and Grace's home. It crossed his mind that he no longer thought of it as _his _home; it was _their_ home. It belonged to both Grace and him, and the thought felt homey and comfortable in his mind.

His eyes tracked Dr. Marks as she slowly walked into the house, taking in the sight of everything around her. Her face was far more expressive than Grace's, looking delighted and interested in the place that her daughter lived, but as he examined her, he could see Grace's features secretly lining hers.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he followed along behind her. There was no way in hell that he was going to speak first. She'd been the one to come to Malibu and seek him out, and she would be the one to say something, he resolved. How the hell had she even gotten a flight that quickly to come back? How had she known where he lived? Why had she waited until Grace was gone to talk to him? His frown deepened the longer the silence drew out.

"Did Grace tell you that 13 colleges offered her full rides because of how good she was at sports?" Sarah asked suddenly. Confusion only drew Tony's eyebrows even further together, and he briefly had the mental image of what he might look like with a unibrow. Shaking the thought from his mind and focusing back on what was happening in front of him, he shook his head.

"Uh, no, she never did tell me that," he monotoned. She smiled, and her eyes got a distant look as her mind travelled to a different time that didn't include him or the Grace that he knew and loved. She folded her arms across her chest and made significant eye contact with him.

"She was amazing at sports—"

"—because she could tell what the opponents were gong to do before they did it," Tony finished, allowing a knowing grin to sneak onto his face. Sarah nodded pleasantly.

"Exactly. She played every sport under the sun. Soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, whatever she could. And she was good at all of it. She was also able to avoid getting into fights, believe it or not. There was only one year in middle school that she was suspended from the soccer team when another girl pulled her hair, and she took it as an attack. You can imagine how the other girl looked." A wry smile found its way into Sarah's brown eyes. Tony couldn't stop himself form returning a mildly interested look; Grace rarely told him anything about her time growing up in her house, so half of him wanted to hear what Sarah had to say because he wanted to know more about Grace Marks. However, the other half of him was severely loyal to Grace, and he knew he should be adopting her steely, detached look in order to get Sarah out of his house as quickly and efficiently as possible.

A wave of something passed over Sarah's eyes, and her face darkened.

"I didn't think to get her involved with martial arts when she was younger. Perhaps if I had, she would've been able to protect herself when those people came after her in South America," she said. The dark flash was gone, and she offered a tiny smile to Tony. She looked a lot younger with that expression on her face, more like a sheepish version of Grace. A moment of silence passed between them, Tony's hard eyes letting nothing on.

"She wasn't always the emotionless, detached young woman you live with. Of course, she always had a self-consciousness and self-awareness that was astounding, but she was far more open when she was young. The injection didn't give that to her; the injection enhanced her strongest features, and self-preservation was her strongest. So she was always careful, but she was nowhere near what she is now. Even after she'd received the injection, as she grew up, she was a lot more open than she is these days. She had plenty of friends and boyfriends in high school, always going out and having fun with them. I guess that was part of her survival instinct. How she was going to survive high school. But whenever she came home, she did shut down the slightest bit. She wasn't as friendly and silly with Andrew and me as she was with her friends. Her detachment started then, and it's only gotten worse." She was quiet as she looked around her, not making eye contact with Tony. "Well, Mr. Stark, I guess you're wondering why I'm here," she said finally, the silence shattering like stained church glass around their feet.

"Damn right," he sharply replied.

"I came to give you a warning," Sarah said evenly. Tony's eyebrows shot up into his hairline in surprise, and he gave a snort.

"A warning?" he repeated incredulously.

"Yes. A warning. Grace isn't someone you can get close to." Sarah's face was serious, giving away nothing to the billionaire. He frowned and rubbed his lower jaw with his hand as he studied her.

"Actually, she's a lot easier to get close to than you think," he snapped. "She's a wonderful person. A beautiful person, inside and out, forgive the cliché. Just because she gives you that impassive face, and you can't guess a damn thing what she's thinking, it doesn't mean that you can't get close to her."

"Her ultimate goal is survival. She'll stop at nothing. Stabbing her captors with the snapped off femur of one of her dead friends? That's not just morbid. That's the epitome of not stopping at anything until she can guarantee that she'll escape alive. She has no moral compass, no place where she can stop and ask herself if what she's doing will hurt other people even if it will guarantee the extension of her life." Sarah's voice had an edge to it, and Tony wondered if she knew some things that she wasn't telling him. However, he didn't let any curiosity escape his face. Instead, he closed himself off to her by crossing his own arms across his chest and frowning even more deeply. The tension was thick, a tight rope connecting the two as they had their stand off.

"I think you don't know her very well at all," he said tensely.

"So she took a hit for you during the Chitauri invasion. That was one time. One time in her entire life that she ever thought about taking the hit for someone else. She's dangerous. You won't get lucky twice, Tony, I can promise you that."

Tony scoffed in response and shook his head, unwilling to believe that what was taking place in front of him was his reality at this moment in time. He narrowed his eyes at her and placed his hands on his hips, a deep fire building up in his solar plexus that was nothing like the fire he'd felt earlier with Grace's body beneath his, her curves and skin so soft and promising. When she touched him, she promised him a better future that he could actually realistically see. Christ, she promised him a better him that she didn't expect him to become, but he became it because he wanted to be better for her. Grace Marks was the comfort that he'd never received in his life before she'd laid her hands through his hair when he'd opened his body to her in his unconsciousness.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not to blame for that. By the way, speaking of which, how did it feel to hold down a four year old girl and inject her with a substance she had no way of understanding or giving consent to?" he asked pointedly. Sarah's eyes flashed angrily; he'd hit a soft point, and he mentally grinned to himself.

"We helped her, Andrew and I," she said in a voice so low that it almost seemed threatening.

"Yeah? Did you realize that before she started screaming from the pain or after?" Tony was pushing her, and he knew it, but he didn't give a fuck. He was barely even thinking; his adrenaline was rolling, speaking for him, and he couldn't stop himself.

"We _saved _her!" she snapped.

"Ok, with all due respect, Dr. Marks, you're fucking crazy if you think that. You know as well as I do that you killed so many parts of that little girl you can't stand it," he spat.

"I saved her! If I hadn't given her that injection, she never would've made it out of that high school when that boy decided he would handle his problems with a machine gun. When that drug lord put his gun to her head and shot her through the brain, she would've been killed instantly. If I hadn't injected her with the Serum, she would've died, and she wouldn't have been brought here to you," she hissed back at him. The sting of her words erupted across his skin, and he was almost physically taken aback by the sharpness of the realization that she was right. If Grace hadn't received the Serum, she wouldn't be alive. She'd be dead, and he never would've known her.

The thought was paralyzing, and for a second, Tony wasn't entirely sure that he knew how to breathe. To know and understand how close she had been to death, that if Sarah and Andrew hadn't forced Grace to accept that shot into her body, she would be dead, and seen her dancing and laughing as she cooked in the kitchen while "Mr. Brightside" played. He never would've felt the softness of her skin and the glow of her smile. He never would've known what it felt like to move within her and have her sweat dry on his skin. He never would've known what it was like to love her and be loved by her in return.

If she hadn't lived, he'd still be in the situation he was in two years ago: a womanizing, reckless genius who couldn't figure out how to make things go the way he wanted them to in his life. He'd be lost amongst the empty bottles that reeked of alcohol and the depression of something not quite realized. He stared straight into Sarah Marks's eyes and didn't blink.

"Selfishly, I'm _unspeakably_ glad that you gave her that injection because I can't imagine my life without her, and she's the reason I haven't lost it yet. Grace has saved my life a thousand times over in ways you'll never understand. But for her sake, I would rather her die as someone's daughter than live as someone's science experiment." He watched his words sink into her skin, clogging every pore with the bitterness and anger that he'd piled into each letter of his statement. Her face hardened and then went slack. Suddenly, she nodded, her mouth pressed tightly into a straight line.

"Be careful, Tony," she said tightly. And without another word, she turned and swiftly walked towards the door that she had come in only moments ago. The click of her heels against the floor made sharp raindrop sounds in the mansion, and the slam of the door behind her was a lion's roar in an empty den. He was alone, and he released his fists, unaware that he'd been clenching them for the past few minutes.

Exhaustion filled his body, and he crossed to the couch, half-sitting and half-leaning on it. What the fuck was even happening anymore? What the fuck had just happened? He could feel a headache coming on from deep within the overworked wires of his brain. He'd been prone to migraines for the past few months, and they usually were signs that he was too stressed and needed to rest. Sometimes, if he were feeling particularly reckless, he'd push right through them, but he couldn't seem to find the strength to do it now.

He desperately wanted Grace home with him. As much as he wanted her in his arms, he refrained from having Jarvis call her and ask her to come home. His skin crawled with the remnants of Dr. Sarah Marks's presence. He didn't know why, but for the first time in his entire life, he didn't feel totally at ease in his own home.


	8. Engaged

**Yayyy! Shoutouts to bluemermaidpitch, MsRose91, byakuya7309, and akt15 for reviewing!**

**Ok, I think that I'm only going to write two more chapters of this story, and then Grace and Tony will get a break until Iron Man 3 comes out on DVD, where I'll then pick their story back up. When I finish this, I'm officially moving onto a Bruce/OC ****fix. Woohoo! SUPER SUPER SUPER EXCITED ABOUT THAT. It'll be under the Avengers category because the Hulk category on here is way too small :/ As of right now, the title of it will be The Risk of Fearlessness. It might change if I decide on a better title, but if I do change it, I'll let y'all know. I also think that the OC will be named Kim Livingston. Yeah, I'm giving y'all a sneak peek ;)**

**I might not post for a day or so because tomorrow I'm going tubing all day, and then it's Sunday, and I'm moving into college on Sunday. I might be able to have the energy to post, but if I don't, I just wanted to give y'all a warning!**

**Let me know what you think of this chapter! A lot less tension and far more lighthearted than the other chapters have been so far. Let me know your thoughts!**

* * *

Chapter 8

Grace glanced out the window of the car and offered a huge smile to the photographers that were running next to the signature Stark black Audi as Happy Hogan pulled the car up to the entrance of Stark Industries. Tony couldn't help grinning as he saw how open and friendly she was to the paparazzi. For someone who was so shut off and closed away in real life, she put on a damn good show for the media, and he admired her greatly for it.

"You know they're just eating you up," he said out loud.

"It's game time," she replied and turned back to him with a wink. Happy pulled the car to a stop and opened the door, pushing several photographers back as he did so. Tony got out of the backseat first, holding up his hand in his trademark peace sign. He looked every ounce the bad boy Tony Stark with his sunglasses, flashy suit, and neatly trimmed beard. Flashes went off all around him, and he offered them a smirk before crossing over to the other side to open Grace's car door. He knew she hated that he opened the door for her because she thought it was bad for the feminist movement—it made her look like she couldn't do anything for herself, she said—but they both knew that it was the safest thing for him to do. With her finely tuned survival instinct, any kind of bump from a photographer on a bad day could be construed as an attack, and it'd be very bad publicity for the both of them if she beat the shit out of a member of the paparazzi.

With Tony opening the door, he would be the first to get jostled around by any overeager photographer. She took his hand and stepped out of the car, noticing how he instantly stepped closer to her, wrapping an arm around the small of her back protectively. He was shielding her from the pushing and the flashes the way he always did. She lifted her arm casually and waved with a wide grin on her face. She was wearing a casual winter green sleeveless, collarless button down over fitted black dress pants and nude heels. Her long dark brown hair that she usually wore down was pulled back into a low side ponytail, falling over her shoulder elegantly. Looking every ounce as fashionable and professional as Tony was, she was a knockout.

She had to admit that she was feeling slightly nervous about this press release; it was the first time that either of them had addressed the public since New York, and she wasn't sure what kind of questions they were going to receive from the press. Pepper had advised them against allowing questions, but Tony had said fuck it, they were curious, and as long as Grace was ok with it, they might as well let them ask a few questions.

Tony carefully guided her up the stairs and into the building, the flashes following after the two of them.

"By the way," he murmured out of the corner of his mouth, "you look absolutely fucking lovely." A smile crossed her lips, and she put her hand on the side of his face as they walked to the entrance of the press release room.

"You look great yourself," she replied. Pepper was standing outside, looking the tiniest bit nervous but still completely pulled together. Her face spread into a smile when she saw the two, but her gaze was focused on Grace. Instantly, she ran over and pulled the small woman into a hug.

"Look at you! Let me see your ring. Technically, I've already seen it since Tony was so damn excited he couldn't keep it to himself, but I'm dying to see it on you." Her clear blue eyes lit up when she saw the ring sitting beautifully on Grace's finger. Admittedly, Grace felt a warm bubble of pride and excitement as she extended her hand for Pepper to study. She could even feel Tony puffing up with pride for having done such a great job at getting the ring, his arm pulling her closer to him.

"Oh, it's gorgeous," Pepper breathed. Grace grinned and made eye contact with the CEO.

"Thank you. It's perfect. The two of you did a great job pulling one over on me. It's hard to do that, considering how _alert _I am." She exchanged a knowing look with Pepper and Tony, and they all secretly grinned.

"Well, let's go. Tony, please, I'm begging you, don't pull anything crazy. Just say what you need to, and then be done with it, ok?" Pepper's eyes were wide as she implored Tony. He rolled his eyes dismissively.

"Pep, everything will be a-ok. Swear on my life. Besides, I never do anything unexpected."

"Oh, really? Do I need to remind you of the whole "I'm Iron Man" press release?" Pepper huffed. He grinned and winked at her.

"Yeah, ok. Whatever. Let's go."

Pepper turned and lead the way into the room. A hush fell over the awaiting crowd for only a millisecond; Grace reveled in the silence as all eyes turned towards them. The millisecond was gone as quickly as it had come as excited shouts and camera flashes snapped and crackled in the air around her. She kept her right hand covering her left on purpose; it was all about the element of surprise. She and Tony walked up to the podium and stood calmly and quietly behind Pepper as the tall, blonde CEO took her position.

"Hi, everyone. I'm Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries. Mr. Stark has called together a press release, and he's allowing questions after his statement. If everyone would please be respectful, that'd be much appreciated." She smiled politely for the cameras and stepped back. Tony walked forward, pulling Grace with him. They both stood at the microphone, cameras going off, reporters with their pens poised over the notebooks.

"Long time, no see," Tony remarked casually into the microphone. He scanned the crowd, looking at everyone and taking in their reactions. "Well, I called this press release for an important reason, and I'm getting to that, but first, I wanted to be real with you guys. I was never close with my parents. They were always busy running the company, and I was always off at school, so I didn't get to bond with them and have _Brady Bunch _memories that I'd get to look back on after they died. But they were my family, and you can't change where you come from, no matter how hard you try. And I wish that they were here today so that I could tell them what I'm about to tell all of you.

"This woman beside me came into my life two years and five months ago when I needed help, and she's helped me in more ways than she initially came for. Grace Marks has been the reason I haven't gone _completely _nuts. Obviously, I'm nuts in like, 30,000 different ways, but, honey, I'm nuts about _you_. But no, I didn't call this press release to tell you how crazy I am about this chick. I called it to tell you that we're getting hitched."

Immediately, a roar of voices and cameras combining together in a thunderous crash filled the room. Grace's hand was entwined with Tony's, and he was gazing at her with a proud grin on his face. Reporters were raising their hands for questions, and cameras were capturing moments that would be all over the news later that evening.

"Mr. Stark! Miss Marks!" A man with short hair in the front row raised his hand. Tony glanced at him and nodded.

"When is the wedding going to be?" the man asked. Tony raised his eyebrows and looked to Grace.

"We're still finalizing those details," Grace answered, her voice loud and clear.

"Miss Marks, what about your parents involvement with your wedding? Is it true you're an orphan?" Another reporter raised her hand. Without batting an eyelash, her face turned the appropriate amount of morose, topped off with an appropriately solemn smile.

"Yes. It's true," she said. She felt Tony's hand clench around hers, but her face remained serene and unchanged.

"Where are you thinking about honeymooning?" A blonde woman towards the back spoke up. Tony smirked.

"That's an easy question. Somewhere tropical," he replied.

"Miss Marks, how has New York affected your relationship with Tony?" A third reporter called out.

"I think that if anything, it's bonded us. It helped me realize just how much he means to me. Of course, I've never doubted it, but it only reaffirmed it," she replied.

"Who are you?" A voice rang out. Grace's amber eyes searched the audience until she found, lo and behold, Christine Everhart was the face behind the voice. Christine's blonde curly hair was styled just perfectly, and she still looked every ounce as sharp and on top of her shit as she had the last time Grace had seen her. God, when _was _the last time Grace had seen her? She'd caught a glimpse of her at a fundraiser maybe about six months ago or so, was it?

"Yes, Miss Everhart?" she asked. Nervous tittering amongst the room had broken out, and she could sense Pepper's energy turning sour as the anxiety of something going wrong spiked into her.

"Who are you, Miss Marks? At first you were an engineer, then you retired, and now it turns out that you're a superhero with superhuman strength and remarkable martial arts skills. You're all kinds of things at once, and it's just a little hard to pinpoint who exactly you are," Christine replied smoothly. Grace kept her composure, her amber eyes lighting up.

"Whoever said that someone has to be good at one thing and one thing only? Why is it suspicious that I can make leads in aeronautic engineering while also being a highly trained black belt? I certainly don't expect you, Miss Everhart, to be _solely _an excellent writer. Surely you have other things that you're good at. For example, I would guess horseback riding," she intoned easily. Smugly, she awaited Christine's answer. Grace wasn't throwing out guesses; she could tell just from Christine's build that the young blonde had spent a lot of time as a horseback rider, and her senses were confirmed as a slight flush appeared in the reporter's cheeks.

"Yes, horseback riding," Christine confirmed. Grace brightened.

"Exactly. The only reason people don't give you a hard time about your many talents is the fact that the world's media doesn't track you," she said. She redirected her attention back out to the rest of the crowd. "Yes, I can see how it would look odd that someone who was so focused on engineering also happened to be great at martial arts, but I've put in a lot of time. It was just by luck that I was able to be a part of the Avengers. That will be all the questions I'm answering about New York, the Chitauri, or the Avengers."

"Mr. Stark, how does it feel to be settling down?" A man in a brown leather jacket called out, and Grace breathed a silent sigh of relief that the attention was no longer on her.

"Settling down? I'm just getting started," Tony said with a grin and a wink towards Grace. "That'll be all the questions we're taking this afternoon."

He pulled Grace's head towards him and kissed her on the side of her head, lingering there for an extra few seconds in front of a God he didn't believe in and everyone. Then he took her hand and walked out of there, Grace walking right beside him.

"I think that went well," she murmured as they ducked past more paparazzi outside and into the waiting Audi. He slid into the backseat and shut the door.

"Hey, boss!" Happy said cheerfully. Grace moved to the edge of the seat so that her head was in between the headrests of the driver's and passenger's seats.

"Happy Hogan, I have a question for you," she said lightly. The jovial face of the efficient driver lit up, and he nodded.

"Yes, ma'am. Ask away," he said.

"Would you give me away at my wedding?" she asked. The look on Happy's face was priceless, and it filled her with such giddiness to see how thrilled he was that she knew she'd made the right decision.

"Me? You're asking me to give you away?" he asked softly. She nodded, a huge smile on her face. For a moment, he seemed to be speechless, but he nodded.

"Yes. Yes, I'd love to," he said. His voice was quiet, but she could tell that it meant a lot to him. She felt herself starting to tear up, and she laughed anxiously.

"Oh, God, look at me. The wedding isn't even here, and I'm starting to cry," she said with a laugh. She felt Tony place a hand on her back, and she reached out and squeezed his knee.

"Be careful, or you'll get me going," Happy laughingly joked.

"Ok, let's get the show on the road, Lifetime Movie Network," Tony announced, but he was smiling. Grace leaned back into the backseat and looked up at him. He kissed her forehead.

"You did the right thing," he whispered in her ear so Happy couldn't hear. She turned into him, placing her left hand on his chest so she could touch his arc reactor. She looked at her hand resting over the metal circle, and she saw her ring. The irony of the two of the ring being right against his arc reactor made her smile, and before she could control her emotions, she wrapped her arm tightly around him and buried her face into his shoulder.

"I love you so much," she whispered, her voice tight and full with emotion. His arms enclosed tightly around her in return, and he rested his cheek on top of her head. She so rarely had moments like this that he wanted to capture it in his mind forever. His heart swelled with so much love for her that he thought he was going to explode on the spot. Five years ago, if anyone had ever told him he'd love someone this much, he would've laughed. Fuck, he hadn't understood love. Hadn't understood it at all until he'd lost her the first time after his birthday party.

When she'd looked up at him the night he'd majorly fucked up and told him she was going to ask to be reassigned the next day, he'd known it then. As he'd watched her exit his room and go to hers, he'd known that he loved her because if he hadn't, he wouldn't have felt so broken and hollow watching her leave. He hadn't slept a goddamn wink that night because he'd been struck by how upset he was over her leaving. Besides, that shit just didn't happen to him. For starters, he wasn't used to women willingly leaving; he was used to having to ask them to leave. Secondly, he'd been slapped across the face by a bitterly cold wind of realization that he loved her. He loved her. He loved this girl that he hadn't known for very long at all, and that had floored him to the very depths of his soul.

And here he was, two years later, engaged to that girl, holding her in his arms, completely overwhelmed by the unbelievable strength of these feelings he had for her.

"Honey, I don't think you know how much I love you, too," he whispered back to her. She pulled back the slightest bit and offered up a shaky laugh, looking up at him with watery amber eyes.

"I don't know what it is about you that always reduces me to tears," she said jokingly. "I never used to cry this much until I met you."

"Please, you're in a relationship with _me_. There will always be some reason for tears," he quipped. She laughed but then rested her head against him, quietly listening to the gentle thrum of his heart and allowing it to dull her awareness and her senses about her until there was nothing but Tony, herself, and the car.

* * *

"COME ON, SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!" Grace shrieked, standing up in her seat. Tony sat next to her in the stadium with an amused grin on his face as he watched his fiancée get so deeply absorbed into the game. Soccer was a special love of hers, and well, it made sense now that Sarah had told him Grace had been so good at the sport. He glanced up at her, and he could picture a young, teenage Grace with fierce amber eyes easily owning the field. Of course sports would've been easy for her; her senses were so sharp and in tune to everything around her that she would've been able to sense what everyone was doing at all times and what the best strategy to outplay her opponents was.

"JESUS!" Grace shouted, throwing her hands in the air and angrily sat down in the seat beside Tony. "It's halftime, and we're losing. The forwards aren't shooting when they definitely have the opportunity to."

She was vaguely aware of many pairs of eyes on her, but she didn't particularly give half a shit. It wasn't every day that billionaire Tony Stark and newly announced fiancée Grace Marks showed up to a professional soccer game. It also wasn't every day to see pleasant, likeable Grace Marks scream at a field of sweaty men. Tony looked around him, noticing just how many people were staring. He was used to the staring, just not the cheap seats like Grace had insisted they get instead of one of the special box seats.

"Why do you like soccer so much?" Tony suddenly asked before he could stop himself. She looked over at him and saw him studying her with those warm brown eyes of his. Guiltily, she grinned and mildly shrugged.

"I used to play," she said.

"You did?" he asked. He hoped like hell that his voice sounded convincing.

"Yeah, I did. I played lots of sports when I was younger, but soccer was always my favorite, lacrosse a close second. See, I had the advantage of being able to tell what the other players were going to do before they did it, so I guess it was kind of cheating, but whatever. I was good at it." Her eyes glowed with an excited brightness as she turned her attention back to the game. "I love this shit!"

"Having fun?" Tony asked with a grin. She looked back at him and nodded excitedly. She opened her mouth to say something, but she suddenly stopped, her eyes distracted and focused on something else. For a moment, Tony's heart stopped, but he saw her lips curl up into a smile, and she pointed. He turned to look, and he saw that the Kiss Cam was on them. He lifted his hand and waved at the camera, but last minute, she leaned towards his cheek. Grinning, he realized what she was going to do, and he surprised her by turning his face towards her and catching her lips with his.

The crowd burst into applause and whistles as they kissed. Grace's mouth was split into a smile as she kissed him. Pulling away briefly, she faced the crowd and put a finger over her lips in a shhhh gesture before winking and pulling him back in for a kiss. She wasn't usually this bold with her PDA, especially when a huge crowd of people was watching, so Tony took advantage of the opportunity while he could. He pulled back and wrinkled his nose at her, and she mirrored him. The camera was off on someone else, but they were still looking at each other.

"You're cute," she said to him. He rolled his eyes demurely.

"I don't try," he replied. She giggled and smacked his arm.

"You're too much," she said.

"But I'm all yours."

* * *

Sarah Marks was in her hotel room watching the soccer game. Even after all these years, she still watched soccer because it reminded her of Grace. Was it guilt that she felt? Maybe. Maybe not. But she still watched soccer to think of the daughter that she didn't quite feel belonged to her. Tony's words ran through her mind, but she shut her brain down before she could dwell on them any longer.

Halftime had just started, and she started to get up when she saw a familiar face on the screen. There was Grace. She was smiling, and she looked far from impassive. Sarah froze, taking in the sight of her daughter looking so happy and at ease. She'd seen plenty of interviews and pictures of Grace smiling and laughing before, but there was something remarkably different about her now. The amber eyes that Sarah had been so chilled by before looked warm, almost.

Her eyes. It was always her eyes.

Tony was waving at the Kiss Cam, and Grace leaned in to kiss his cheek, but he turned at the last minute and kissed her on the mouth.

Sarah watched in shocked silence, unable to believe that the full of life young woman on the television screen was the daughter who'd shown nothing more than a blank, empty mask to her every day and every night. Grace was playful; she was being funny. She looked so different than how Sarah was used to seeing her, and it rocked her to her very core just looking at her.

Tony's words rang back in her head: _I think you don't know her very well at all_.

The Kiss Cam had gone elsewhere, but Sarah was left still staring at the screen. That had been Grace, and she suddenly wondered if she'd ever known the girl at all. Five years ago, Sarah would've been able to say with confidence that Grace would never marry, never have children. She wouldn't have hesitated to say that Grace was a programmed machine with only one goal in life: to survive.

But now as the images of just a few seconds ago played across Sarah's mind, she couldn't help but admit that there had been a change in Grace. Was that a change? Or had Grace always been that open, that easy to laugh and smile, but Sarah had never known it? She suddenly found that she couldn't breathe; her heart was in her throat, and she wondered just how much damage she'd created in Grace's life.

All these years she'd thought that she'd created Grace, but she was wrong. Sarah hadn't created Grace. _Grace _had created Grace. She'd created herself. It'd just taken until now for Sarah to see it.


	9. Alone

**Shoutouts to bluemermaidpitch, MsRose91, byakuya7309, hockeygurl39, and morbidprincess666!**

**Oh my gosh, I am SO sorry I haven't updated until now. On Sunday I moved back into college, and I've been in training all day for stuff for the past week. I'll try to get the Bruce/OC story uploaded tonight =)**

**Yes, the Bruce/OC story will be called The Risk of Fearlessness, and it'll be published under the Avengers category. Please feel free to Follow/Favorite me so you can get updates for whenever I do publish it!**

**Trace shippers, don't be alarmed. Tony and Grace will be back whenever Iron Man 3 is released on DVD, and I'll be writing the fic that goes with that, so they aren't gone for now!**

**This chapter is super short, and it's not a terribly happy ending, but I figured that it was kind of fitting for everything that's happened in this story and everything that will happen in Iron Man 3. Let me know what you think! Again, if you want to read my Bruce/OC story, it'll be called The Risk of Fearlessness and will be published under the Avengers. If you want email notifications, Follow/Favorite me!**

**Let me know y'all's thoughts =)**

* * *

Chapter 9

_Good things always come to an end_ was the thought that passed through Grace's mind as she blearily reached out in the middle of the night to find that Tony's side was cold and empty. She opened her eyes, startled to find that she hadn't sensed his getting up and leaving. Even in unconsciousness, her senses were on point, and it bothered her that she hadn't registered Tony's absence. Slowly, she sat up and rubbed her eyes.

"Jarvis, is Tony in the lab?" she asked, her voice full of sleep.

"Yes, Agent, I'm afraid that he is," Jarvis replied. Grace sighed in frustration.

"What time is it?"

"It is 4:39 in the morning."

"How long has he been there?"

"I hesitate to answer, seeing as how Mr. Stark promised to reprogram me if I told you how long he's been at work."

"Alright, Jarvis, how about this: what time did Tony go down to his lab?"

"Excellent loophole, Agent! I was quite hoping you would pick up on it. He entered his lab at 11:35, half an hour after you fell asleep."

Grace heaved a sigh and sat up, rubbing her irritated eyes with the heels of her palms. Things had been too good to be true, and this was only proof. The time that she and Tony had spent together hadn't fixed him, and even though she hadn't thought about it, she'd hoped deep down that it would've fixed him, that he wouldn't need his suits. But yet, here she was again waking up in the middle of the night without him there with her.

She stood up and slowly started her way downstairs to the lab. The halls passed by her, so familiar and so…so home-like…so _Tony_ that it made her chest ache to even look at them. She moved down the stairs and punched her code into the door of the lab. It slid open, and she entered the room. Tony was welding something, so he hadn't even noticed her presence. Folding her arms over her chest, she stopped and watched him.

She'd watched Tony work thousands of times. Millions of times, even. But she never got tired of it. She never tired of watching his muscles contract and expand as he lifted something above his head, watching him run his hand over his face and seeing the grease streaks left behind, him oblivious to it. She loved watching his dark brown eyes grow bright with a connection, an idea that had just formed in his head. He worked hard. That she could never deny. He worked so hard that in fact he sometimes neglected their relationship, and really, Grace couldn't even call him out on it because she understood where he came from. Part of her was torn as she stood in his lab with her arms folded and her amber eyes fixed on him. One half of her wanted to pull him back up to bed and force him to sleep and spend time with her, but the other half was too rational for that. She knew that this was how Tony was, that this was how he dealt with something. And really, her survival instinct was totally ok with letting him build all these suits for protection. So she was split. Her emotions were getting the better of her, and she of all people knew that that was lethal.

She contemplated forcing herself to turn around and walk upstairs, returning to sleep in the dark isolation of an unspoken hopelessness, but her emotions were too strong, and she couldn't. She just couldn't. So she took a few steps into the lab and waited for him to be done welding. After a few seconds went by, he set down his equipment and lifted the welding mask from his face. This was her opportunity. She crossed over to him and sat at the stool next to him.

Startled, Tony jumped. When his eyes settled on a sleepy but concerned looking Grace Marks, he let out a relieved groan and plopped down in the stool next to her.

"Jesus fucking Christ, you scared me. You never make any fucking noise when you walk," he said lamely, knowing that Grace was there because she'd woken up and seen that he wasn't there. She didn't say anything, instead calmly staring at him without any expression on her face. This was typical for her; about seven times out of ten she didn't have any signs of emotion giving hint to what she was thinking on her face, but Tony had gotten to where he could guess, and he guessed that she wasn't that thrilled.

"I know. I know. I'm sorry," he blurted out. Might as well apologize before they fought, and really, he didn't even have a defense for himself. As he sat there under the scrutiny of her burning amber eyes, he had the good sense to feel a little ashamed and embarrassed. Grace was so strong. She'd had a bitch of a childhood, and she'd just faced her mom for the first time in years, and she was able to sleep. She wasn't haunted by anything, and Tony knew that she'd seen all kinds of fucking terrible things on her missions. Hell, he figured that she'd done and had done to her all kinds of fucking terrible things, and yet she was able to let go of it. Sure, she pored over her studies and was extra paranoid for a while, but she was able to move on. He couldn't. He certainly didn't feel as though he were anywhere near as strong as Grace was, and he was embarrassed as he sat there feeling her amber gaze on him.

"I didn't say anything," she said evenly.

"I know. I just…I'm sorry. I know you're not happy. I'm here. You were up there. I'm sorry," he replied choppily.

"Don't be. I just wanted to see if you're ok," she answered with a light tone. Tony glanced at her with an uneasiness that lingered right on the surface of his chocolate brown eyes. He'd been expecting her to be mad, and here she was acting as though she weren't. Running a hand through his hair, he offered her a half-smile.

"It seems like that's all we've been asking each other for the past few days," he said wryly. She smiled back at him, but it wasn't a full Grace smile that lit up her face. It was a small smile that wasn't half way genuine, and the force of it hit Tony in the chest. He knew she was still neglecting to say anything for the sake of him, and it pained him and made him love her even more strongly.

"It's been a rough past few days," she said cautiously, not giving anything away.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I'll come up to bed."

"You don't have to. I just wanted to check in on you. I worry about you." For the first time since she'd come down, a real flicker of emotion passed across her face. She gave a tiny shrug and a smile, but there was more behind it. Tony wanted to say something to assuage her, but he couldn't think of anything. So he did what he knew got through to her the best. He touched her. In a swift quick motion, he'd pulled her out of the stool and onto his lap, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist, pressing her into him. He was rewarded by feeling her muscles slowly relaxing as he pressed his face into her shoulder and closed his eyes.

"I'm fine, ok?" he said softly, reassuringly. He looked up at her and saw her looking down at him, her amber eyes wide and comforting. She nodded, lifting her hands to his face and placing them gently on either side of his jaw. He closed his eyes at the coolness of her touch.

"I love you, ok," he murmured quietly.

"I love you, ok," she returned, her tone matching his.

"I'll be up shortly, I promise. I'm just going to finish up a few things, alright?" he asked. She nodded and got up, her face once again blank. Before she turned, though, she smiled and lifted her hand in a wave. He returned it, grinning at her. She turned around and started up the stairs, ignoring the pang in her heart and trying to convince herself that she believed Tony's promise.


End file.
